


Figure out what's yours

by imperfectcircle



Series: Crooked Media OT3 triptych [3]
Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Getting Together, LA Era (Crooked Media RPF), Multi, OT3, Queer Feels, please see notes for additional content warnings, polyamorous pining, queer community
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 22:41:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20366290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectcircle/pseuds/imperfectcircle
Summary: All of which goes some way to explaining why in January 2017, at a time when Lovett really should be focusing on (a) his burgeoning media empire and (b) politics, he's also (c) finally signing up to grindr.





	Figure out what's yours

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes so much to Laliandra's patient and thoughtful feedback, encouragement and general awesomeness. I couldn't have done it without you! Thank you also to LittleMousling, for thorough and extremely helpful American-picking. All mistakes and terrible choices remain, of course, my own. 
> 
> Spencer features here very much as an original character -- any resemblance to the real Spencer is purely coincidental.
> 
> CONTENT NOTES: As well as other, more cheerful things, this fic is about Lovett dealing with a very specific strand of internalised homophobia. More details in the end notes if you would like to check those before deciding whether or not to read. 
> 
> And as ever, please keep it secret, keep it safe. There's no reason for anyone connected even remotely with the CM empire to know about this.

What happens is Spencer and Kyle break up two weeks after Trump wins, because that's absolutely what everyone needs right now. It adds a little spice to an otherwise dull November, really. Lovett should be grateful. 

Lovett is not grateful. He wishes he could say he'd never liked Kyle, that asshole, but he had, and also, maybe as importantly, Spencer had, and it's altogether one more thing than anyone can reasonably be expected to handle. 

He's the first to admit -- second, maybe, after Spencer, who has a lot of opinions on the matter for someone you'd think could maybe consider the merits of quiet gratitude -- that he's not the most calming presence in his friends' lives. He can distract Spencer from his misery; he can go through Spencer's (clean) underwear and remove the pairs that were originally Kyle's; he can come up with a list of hot guys for Spencer to fuck his way through _and_ he can facilitate this process with his unique brand of wingmanship. But when it comes to just sitting quietly with Spencer's feelings, Lovett isn't necessarily the friend you'd want. 

Still, he's the friend Spencer has, so he does his time in the Sadness Mines. He carries the lamp of He Never Deserved You while Spencer unearth new seams of Kyle-related misery to drill -- dig? blast? what did you do with seams of coal? It's not important, what's important is that Lovett is there in Spencer's time of times, even with everything else going on in the last months of 2016. 

Not that Spencer doesn't have other friends. Spencer had in many ways been the first in the bewilderingly long line of charming, friendly goyim who inexplicably let Lovett into their lives and laughed at his jokes until he refused to leave. Spencer has lots of other friends. Hundreds, probably. But Lovett's the one he calls in the middle of an all-night Call of Duty marathon because he misses the way Kyle would shittalk the NPCs, and so Lovett is the one who shows up. 

All of which goes some way to explaining why in January 2017, at a time when Lovett really should be focusing on (a) his burgeoning media empire and (b) politics, he's also (c) finally signing up to grindr. 

"We support you?" Tommy tries when Lovett brings this up at their next founders' meeting. "Go get 'em, champ?"

"Nice," Lovett says. "Like it. Excellent use of 'champ' in a homosexual context. But my point is, I resisted this garbage app for so long. I didn't use it in DC, when pickings were, I don't know if you noticed, offensively slim."

"Oh, we noticed," says Favs, who to be fair had been the recipient of many of Lovett's thoughts about the dearth of willing DC cock that wasn't attached to closeted Republicans, actual teenagers, or men whose idea of vanilla sex was putting ice cream on the nipple clamps. 

"I didn't use it when my show was cancelled and all the clubs of West Hollywood could not, between them, soothe my wounded soul."

Tommy squints at him in something like concern, so Lovett flaps a hand: 

"Not the point, it's fine, I got over it. The point is, I resisted grindr for _years_, but now Spencer is sad and out of friendship for him, I am going to Go. On. Dates."

"If we ask you why you're going to go on dates--" Favs starts. 

"Go. On. Dates," Tommy corrects him.

"Sure. If we ask you why you're doing that to help Spencer, can we _then_ get back to the website designs the nice people at Red Antler sent over?"

They can, but where would the fun be in that? Favs had interrupted their last founders' meeting to take four hundred identical blurry photos of Pundit and Leo playing in a sunbeam, so his glass house is looking pretty glassy over there. 

Lovett is just drawing breath to voice this perfectly reasonable opinion when Tommy nudges his foot. "The dating?"

"Spencer needs to get out there and play the field. Spencer is a beautiful soul who cannot face the harsh realities of dating without an emotional support gay to play the field with him. We're going to go on terrible dates, meet terrible men, and complain about it afterwards over bright pink cocktails and shitty beer."

At least, that was the plan. Much like Favs' plan to get the meeting back on track, it does not go well. 

It doesn't spiral off the rails immediately. Lovett has to give the universe that much credit. His and Spencer's first dates of the new, post-Kyle era are both exactly as disastrous as expected. Spencer gets a spoken word poet who's into humiliation -- which, he and Lovett agree afterwards, is not a bad match of career and kink -- and Lovett gets an investment banker who doesn't believe in vaccines or antibiotics. They both endure moderately good food and truly bad conversation for the requisite one and a half to two hours, then go back to Lovett's to coddle Pundit and drink pre-mixed tequila sunrises. 

That's great. That's perfect. Spencer's getting back in the game, Lovett's collecting some stories that -- after a little careful editing -- will make Favs and Tommy spit out their coffee, and no one has to have their cell confiscated to stop them drunkenly texting Kyle at 3am. 

Date two is where the rot sets in. 

Lovett holds up his end of the bargain perfectly. He sits through his dinner date with a guy who opens by (incorrectly) guessing Lovett’s star sign and follows this up by demanding he text his mom to find out what time of day he was born. Lovett has never texted his mom from a date before, and doesn't intend to start now. He comes home to shower Pundit in the love that is her birthright and assemble two truly appalling glittery blue cocktails from the bottles Favs gave him the day before "to support Spencer in this new, uh, thing." 

Meanwhile, Spencer, that no-good cheat, is out "having a good time" on a date with a "fun and hot" guy who isn't into anything weird at all. That wasn't any part of the deal, though Lovett grudgingly supposes maybe he can be happy that Spencer is happy. Maybe. 

So Lovett, like a fool, decides to take his dayglo blue drinks and his lament about a loathsome Libra (who's actually a Virgo, but Lovett can't think of anything good for V) across the road to his other charming, friendly goyim. 

The other thing to understand here is that Lovett has boundaries with Favs and Tommy. Not many, admittedly, and fewer since they started a company together, but some. Some boundaries. Enough that he doesn't debrief with them immediately after a bad date, because in the immediate aftermath (a) straight sympathy for gay problems is the worst, and (b) comparing himself to two blindingly handsome, unfairly brilliant men when he's feeling sad and undateable is also the worst. 

The lights are on, so Lovett would normally just let himself in if it weren't for the drink in each hand. Instead, he jams his elbow against the bell, ringing until he hears Favs laugh/cursing:

"I'm coming, asswad. God, you are so annoying." Favs opens the door wearing the loose, happy grin of the sincerely stoned. "Lovettttt! Heeey!" 

From Favs' front room, Tommy starts chanting: "Lov-ett! Lov-ett!" He's sleeping in Favs' spare room at the moment, half his life still in San Francisco waiting to be packed up in boxes and brought home. 

It is, Lovett has to admit, not _not_ gratifying, even if he knows the welcome owes more to edibles than to his own innate awesomeness. 

Fifteen minutes later, Lovett's beginning to wonder why he ever had this boundary with Favs and Tommy. They're _great_ listeners. Favs keeps saying things like, "Your jokes were wasted on him," and "He doesn't know what he's missing," while frowning in outrage at Virgo Guy's many flaws. Tommy not only drinks both the disgusting blue drinks but declares that they are delicious and Lovett is a genius. Plus they keep smiling at him like he's the most interesting and funny thing in the room, which, Lovett's not going to lie, he's super easy for. 

"You guys are the best at this." He tips back the last of his beer and salutes them with the empty can. "I don't know why I never made you listen to my shitty date debriefs before."

"Uh, you make us listen to your shitty date stories all the time," Tommy protests. 

"The guy from Des Moines who didn't believe in tipping," Favs says.

"Andy's friend's brother who didn't like dogs."

"The hot one with the tattoo who had a thing for feet."

"The not hot one with the tattoo who also had a thing for feet."

"Yeah, yeah, you hang off my every word," Lovett interrupts before they get any further back through their creepily accurate list of his dating failures. "Those are my shitty date _stories_. That's when I've refined them to the pithy gems --"

"Debatable," Tommy says. 

"Thank you Thomas, no one asked you, that's when I've _carefully and painstakingly refined them_ down to the pithy gems you both so clearly treasure."

Favs frowns. "I don't think you refine gems."

"My shitty date debriefs are a whole other thing. They're the raw material, the vulnerable underbelly. They're where the real magic happens."

For the last few minutes, Tommy has been carefully lifting one of Pundit's ears, letting it flop down, and then repeating the process on the other one. Tommy badly needs a dog of his own. But at Lovett’s words, Tommy stops playing with her ears and focuses all his squinty stoned attention on Lovett. Rightly affronted by this abandonment, Pundit gives a tiny, barely there, definitely-not-a-bark noise of protest. 

"Wait, you mean you _haven't_ been debriefing with us?" Tommy asks.

There's no reason for Tommy to reproach him for this. Lovett had perfectly reasonable boundaries honed by years of handsome straight friends and their handsome straight nonsense. And anyway, he points out, at length and with hand gestures, it's not like Favs and Tommy have been debriefing with him after all their shitty dates. 

"You hate it when we debrief --" Tommy cuts himself off. "Can we use a different word?"

Favs, who's almost as much of a perfect angel as Pundit, throws himself on the grenade of Tommy's NatSec trauma, which, okay, probably isn't the most sensitive metaphor Lovett could go with here. He's out of practice. "Post-op meetings? Lessons learned? Post-evaluation close-out?"

Tommy raises Pundit's ear to Favs in thanks. "You hate it when we have post-shitty-date post-evaluation close-out meetings with you. You said you'd rather crawl back into a recycling bin and close the lid yourself than listen to, uh, us talk about that stuff."

Lovett’s exact words had been _than listen to two unnecessarily handsome straight bros talk about how the gorgeous women you effortlessly charm don't meet your exacting standards_, but Tommy's blush makes it pretty clear he remembers that. 

"The last time I tried to post-shitty-date end-of-project post-evaluative-wrap-around close-out meet with you --" Favs starts, breaking to join in the laughter at his joke. "The last time, you threw something at me and threatened to call my mom." 

"And I stand by it," Lovett says firmly. "I say this with love, but Manda is so far out of your league your only post-date whatever whatever should have been you weeping at your good fortune." He means it, too. Manda is awesome. They're getting brunch in a couple of weeks. There will be mimosas, and he doesn't care if that makes him a stereotype. 

Favs shrugs. "I wasn't feeling it."

"Right! This is the thing." They've strayed off topic, and Lovett is going to bring them back. "Your shitty dates are you go out with a gorgeous, funny, brilliant woman and you don't click. My shitty dates start with him trying to guess my star sign and end with an uncomfortable conversation about how I'm not judging his toenail fetish but it's just not for me."

Tommy makes a face. Actually, Tommy and Favs both make faces, but Favs's is just his usual _I'm not going to laugh no wait I'm laughing_ face, which is gratifying but normal. Tommy's face is more of a whole thing. He follows it up with, "Hey now."

"Fine, whatever, not to belittle your secret feelings, toxic masculinity is a curse, live your best lives, but my point stands." Lovett pauses. He has a point. A great point. That he can definitely remember. "My point stands: You guys are the perfect audience for my post-date shit, and I need to take full advantage of this." 

#

Lovett had dated this guy in DC called Callum. Callum was pretty into roleplaying -- sexy, not gaming -- and Lovett had gone with it, because it was fun and also because Callum had startlingly green eyes and a way of smiling that made Lovett feel like he was the only person in the room.

How it went was they'd be fucking around, maybe after a drink or two, and something in Callum's face would shift, a change of gears, and he'd say, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a C on this midterm, Jonathan," or, "Please, officer, I can't afford another ticket," or whatever, and Lovett would counter, "Is there _anything_ I can do to change your mind?" or "License and registration please," and they'd be off to the competitive horny improv races. It always ended the same way: with mutual satisfaction and a vague feeling that the whole thing shouldn't have been as hot as it was. Out of all of it, Lovett had kind of liked best how Callum was into the roleplay, not the part; there was something endearing about how he was equally happy as the stern boss or the failing student, just as long as someone was taking someone else firmly yet problematically in hand. 

It was all good for a couple of months. They had fun, even went on a couple of dates that weren't just a quick drink before a leisurely fuck, and then one day Callum had put his hand on Lovett’s cock, looked at Lovett with his startlingly green eyes, and said in a not-bad impression of a flat-voiced Bostonian bro, "Hey, Lovett, I've seen the way you look at me. Not cool, man. Not cool." 

Lovett knew then what Callum had been expecting. Sexy shameful arousal building to frenetic urgency, like if they fucked fast enough he wouldn't have time to be embarrassed. Honestly, that was how it went most of the time when Callum slipped something in just a little bit filthier than usual. Now, with the benefit of several years' hindsight, he didn't even blame Callum for trying. 

At the time, though, Lovett had _absolutely_ blamed Callum for trying. It was hard to remember how he'd felt in the moment. Looking back, he could pick out some of the components: humiliation, disgust, defensiveness, shame. All the crap that came from growing up soaking in the knowledge that the worst thing he could be, worse than just being your standard order gay Jewish nerd, the worst thing was being one of those predatory gays. Being a Bad Gay. But then, at the time? He'd just felt like shit. Not like he and Callum had some sexy shared secret, because in all honesty there was no secret to uncover. Like shit. 

It wasn't a proud moment for him. He'd jerked away from Callum, erection flagging, who knows what written all over his face. Callum, who was, he could admit now, probably too good for him, had realised the misstep and course-corrected like a pro, dragging them both into a familiar math-tutoring-for-handjobs bit before Lovett had time to spiral. 

Lovett waited three more weeks to end it with Callum, so it didn't look like it was a direct response to the thing. He hadn't fooled either of them. 

He just. Favs and Tommy are very attractive, very easy to love. They’re two of his closest friends and favourite people in the world, but even before they were, he knew that they were special, that he was better and happier around them, that he wanted them in his life. 

And sure, he didn’t then and doesn’t now want to be a cliche, he doesn’t want to be a pathetic gay loser pining after unattainable straight men. But more than that, it makes him feel weird and bad in ways he doesn’t like about himself, this thought that he might be taking more from their friendship than they mean to give. Something very deep inside him knows whatever else he might or might not be, he couldn't ever be the kid caught peeking in the locker room. 

Which is all, it’s a lot, okay? It was a lot to slowly grow to understand about himself, and it is a lot to look back at and realize, huh, okay, so that's what was going on there. But now he does know it about himself, he explains to Pundit, and he’s kind of mad about it. 

Pundit wuffs quietly, barely even a sound, which Lovett decides means, _Internalised homophobia is the worst._

"It _is_ the worst, baby." He scritches her behind the ears. She gets him. "And you know what makes it worse? He gave really good head."

#

“And then he asked me — me, Jon Lovett, noted shy and retiring violet — if I thought maybe I needed to work on my public speaking.”

Favs and Tommy laugh obediently. They’re sober, or lightly beer-buzzed, but it can’t be helped. Tempting as it is, Lovett’s not going to demand they get high every time he has a bad date just to soothe his ego. 

It helps that Tommy is in a pissy mood, which is always hilarious. 

“So this asshole tried to, what, sell you his services? On a date?”

“Oh no, my sweet innocent young heterosexual, he wanted to Teach Me,” Lovett lets the capital letters fall heavy with innuendo. “Maybe tenderly adjust my stance while breathing heavily in my ear.”

“Gross,” says Tommy, who is _not_ that vanilla, but is clearly in a mood to be contrary. Lovett can respect that. 

“I don’t know,” Lovett says, thinking of Callum with the kind of wistfulness you only get with time and a dry spell. “It can work.”

Favs laughs. “So what did you say?”

Lovett salutes Favs with his beer. “You’re my new favourite heterosexual.”

Favs, being Favs, visibly preens. 

“I told him golly, what a kind offer, I couldn’t possibly take advantage of such generosity, and then I left him with the check.”

It’s not true, but it gets a laugh. 

Lovett lies back on the better of Favs' two couches. When he'd come in, Favs and Tommy had been sitting on it, but he'd demanded it as his due in this painful world of heartbreak, heteronormativity and hopelessly bad dates. 

"Dating is garbage," Lovett says to the ceiling. "Men are trash."

"We are," Favs agrees easily. "A woman at the dog park on Alden Drive gave Tommy her number, and now I can't take Leo back there." 

"God, I hate you," Lovett says. "What's wrong with her, Tommy? Her movie star good looks too symmetrical for you? Her non-profit rescue center for orphaned puppies isn't carbon neutral?"

Tommy laughs kind of pissily. It's one of Lovett's favorite Tommy laughs, where Tommy doesn't want to be amused, but can't help himself. 

"I'm not looking right now," Tommy says. "Got to work through some shit, I think."

Which, huh. Okay. Lovett sits up to look at Tommy, sees Favs turning to do the same. 

Tommy snorts a laugh. "Christ, you two are like sharks scenting blood, I swear. I'm just, you know." He shrugs. "I've got to sort out what I want from what I think I should want. Better late than never."

He sounds kind of mad at himself, which, hey, not cool. Lovett runs through and discards a couple of jokes about how they all know what Tommy wants -- white picket fence, a small army of tiny baby Vietors and massive energetic dogs, a lifetime supply of striped blue clothing from the Gap -- and goes instead for: "Sharks scenting blood, way to overdramatize our perfectly normal and proportional concern. What is this, Animal Planet with Tommy Vietor? Are you and Jon about to swim north for the winter?"

"We wouldn't leave you behind," Tommy says. Pauses. Smirks. "Unless you got injured in a fight with an octopus and there was a sad montage where you gradually weakened and died."

Favs brays with laughter. Lovett hates him. "We'd be sad about it," Favs says, "before swimming off for a brighter future off the Oregon coast." 

Lovett doesn't lie back down, because Favs is very obviously about to go for the tried and true Feelings Bro kill shot. 

Right on cue, Favs adds, "Seriously, though, Tom, you know you can tell us anything, right?"

Tommy rolls his eyes. They both know Favs too well for it to work, and yet, also, an earnest and concerned Jon Favreau is devastatingly effective. "As soon as there's something to tell, you'll be the first to know. What the fuck, anyway, I want to know more about Jerry's life coaching business. Did he try to guess your Myers Briggs Indicator?"

"Myers Briggs is what sociopaths have instead of personalities," Lovett says, not caring that Tommy and Favs are both mouthing along with him. "So yeah, obviously."

Favs gets them all another beer, and Tommy goes on a whole bit about how Lovett would say that, he's a classic ENFP.

"None of those letters mean anything," Lovett tells him firmly, definitely not googling ENFP on his phone while he argues. "And fuck you, this is nothing like me." 

Tommy just smirks like an asshole and says things like, "That's your intuition speaking there," and "I'm getting a very perceiving vibe from you right now," because Tommy is the worst. 

Twenty minutes later, they're down the rabbit warren of wikipedia links and misremembered psychological terms, arguing about whether Belbin's Team Roles was the thing that guy from DHHS used to get drunk and talk about at a moment's notice. 

Favs gets stuck on not being able to remember the guy's name, and is briefly convinced it was Jerry before Tommy laughingly points out that no, that was Lovett's date. 

"Jerry, right!" Favs says, sitting forward. "You haven't finished telling us about Jerry! Did he chew with his mouth open? You hate that."

"I do hate that," Lovett says cheerfully. "No, his table manners were perfect, it was just his actual manners that sucked. The public speaking negging wasn't even the worst of it -- he had a whole thing about how his ex used to--"

"Nooo!" Tommy interrupts, throwing his hands up in the air. "Not his ex."

"Yes his ex. He had this whole thing about how his ex used to duck his head after telling jokes, and it was the cutest thing, and how maybe if I tried that a little more, people might find me funnier."

"Says the guy who thinks he's a better public speaker than you," Favs says. "What a fucking shitheel."

"No, no, he might be onto something," Tommy says. "He's about to launch a weekly show at the Improv, right? Oh, wait, no, that's you."

Lovett raises his beer to them. They get him. 

"You know what we haven't listened to in far too long?" he says, because he's had a lousy date and he deserves this.

Tommy and Favs shout things like, "No!" and "God please no!" and "I'm begging you!" and "I will set this house on fire!" but he knows what they mean is, _It's been nearly six hours since we last heard your song, we need it in our lives._

"This is your fault," Favs hisses to Tommy as the first notes start to play. 

"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," Tommy hisses back. 

Lovett feels appreciated. 

#

The sex shop across the road from their office has just opened for the day, which means it's time for Lovett to start thinking about lunch. He's at his desk running through some thoughts Elisa had about Lovett or Leave It guests, trying to decide if he's going to cash in all his showbiz favors in the first month, or save some for when the show inevitably crashes and burns. 

"Oh, hey," Tommy says as Lovett lands on the side of cashing in everything and letting the chips of this mixed metaphor fall where they may. "A friend of mine from Iowa just sent me an invite to his commitment ceremony."

"Retro," Lovett says, only half listening. "Marriage not good enough for him now the gays have it?"

"I don't think that's it." Tommy's voice is deliberately easy, which means Lovett has just fucked up. He replays the last couple of moments of conversation in his head, mapping out a few different ways he could have got that wrong, one of which Tommy confirms when he continues, "He's getting committed to a man and a woman, so." 

"Oh, cool," Lovett says. He resists the urge to overcorrect to show how much of a bigot he isn't, instead following with, "You going to go?"

"I think so. If I can make the dates work."

Over in the Jon Favreau section of the peanut gallery, the tips of Favs' ears have gone red. "Anyone I know?" Favs asks.

There are only five of them in the office -- Lovett, Favs, Tommy, Tanya and Sarah -- but Tanya has her earbuds in and Sarah makes a point of ignoring anything not directed at her. It doesn't help her when the mice make an appearance, but otherwise it's a fine strategy for sharing half a square foot of office space with the rest of them. 

Tommy says a generic WASPy name that means nothing to Lovett. Favs squints in concentration but clearly can't place it either: "Did they send a picture? Maybe I'll recognize the face?"

Tommy very slightly hesitates before showing Favs his laptop screen, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of discomfort that might as well be a neon flashing sign: _Tommy Vietor thinks you'll make this weird._

Favs' ears are entirely red now, but he's nodding easily enough to fool anyone who can't see the tell. Really, why any of them pretend to be functioning adults, Lovett doesn't know. 

And oh, hey, Sarah has just put her over-ear headphones on. Jon Favreau's embarrassment is apparently loud enough to disturb even her concentration. 

"Oh yeah, I remember him," Favs says while his entire body screams in counterpoint to Tommy's, _Jon Favreau is trying very hard not to make this weird._

"Jon," Lovett says, annoyed on behalf of this generic WASP he's never met and never will, "sometimes when a person and a person and a person love each other very much--"

"No, that's not--" Favs interrupts him, overlapping with Tommy's, "That isn't--"

"Okay," Lovett says, drawing it out. "What is it then, if it's not that?"

Tommy and Favs exchange a look. 

"God, I hate you both so much," Lovett says. This is by far and away the most annoying they do. He should have put some kind of clause in the endless paperwork they spent the last few months completing: _All founders to have equal access to silent communication through microexpressions._

Tommy loses whatever battle of invisible rock paper scissors they're playing with their minds, and turns the screen so Lovett can see the picture of three blandly happy white people in upper middle class polyamorous bliss. 

"The woman? She, uh. We." He stops. Blushes. His eyes dart to Sarah and Tanya, who are both silently bobbing along to whatever they're listening to, the perfect vision of two women who are honestly just trying to get some work done in this ridiculous sham of an office. 

"We slept with her," Favs continues for him. "I don't know if you know this, but we used to pick up together? On the campaign trail? And we. She. Yeah."

Oh. This. Neither Favs nor Tommy have ever told Lovett about this directly -- probably, a mean voice he's trying to listen to less tells him, because they didn't want him getting ideas -- but he's heard about it from several independent sources. He tries not to feel any particular way about it. There are years where he's more successful, and years where he's less successful. 

"Everyone knows you two used to pick up together on the campaign trail. Five people told me before I'd even worked out the shortest route to the cafeteria." Lovett makes a show of examining the picture more carefully. "She's traded down, but I can't fault her taste. They can get it." 

All three of the happy triple are generically good looking in a non-threatening way. If Sears sold polyamory, they would be front and center on the catalog. 

"You knew?" Favs asks. He looks a little discombobulated, as if he maybe thought office gossip only happened to other people. 

"Don't worry, they all made it very clear it was a thoroughly heterosexual pursuit." Lovett can hear the snippiness in his voice. He doesn't like what it says about him. "Anyway, Tommy, which one of them is your friend? The blandly handsome white guy?" 

Tommy laughs good-naturedly. "The one on the left. He used to rock an appalling buzz cut. Worse than Jon, if you can imagine." 

Lovett shudders theatrically. "I cannot and you can't make me."

"What was it about the campaign that made us think no one could see our hair?" Tommy continues, turning his screen back so Lovett no longer has to feign interest in three boring people and their only mildly less boring love-life. 

They're silent for a few minutes -- Favs is clearly just on twitter, but Tommy appears to be working -- until Favs asks, "Won't it be weird if you go?"

He's picked up Leo and is cuddling him like that will somehow make this entire conversation less awkward. 

Tommy looks a little panicked, a little pissed, so Lovett steps in to give him a moment to decide which way to fall: 

"Straight people have all these bizarre hangups," he says. "If gay weddings didn't invite anyone who'd slept with either of the husbands, they'd be a fifth the size and never have any decent catering."

Favs laughs, holds up Leo defensively. "I was just asking."

"I think it'll be fine," Tommy says, landing not on panicked or pissed, but his secret third option where Favs is concerned, patient. "They wouldn't have invited me if it was an issue."

"Oh," Favs says, quietly. "Good." 

It's a weird interaction, but Favs is a weird guy -- his trick is to distract everyone else with the handsome and the good at things, so they don't notice the ridiculous disaster beneath the surface. Favs goes back to checking his phone, and Lovett and Tommy exchange a glance that is at least kissing cousins with the _Straights, am I right?_ look Lovett has shared with many, many queer friends over the years.

#

Spencer is off on his fourth date with the same guy, because Spencer is a big gay jerk who doesn't understand that the point of grindr is to hook up with inappropriate and awful people and never see them again. 

"So you don't want to go back to mine?" Peete-with-three-e's asks.

Yeah, Lovett probably shouldn't have said that last bit out loud. "No, not you, you're fine, barely inappropriate and awful at all," he says, which gets him a bigger laugh than he deserves. 

He and three-e'd-Peete are having a nice time, at least by the standards of these things. They're at an Italian place with patterned tablecloths and real candles that show off Peete-o'-the-e's cheekbones. He's cute in a harried-lawyer-for-a-non-profit kind of way; he likes Lovett’s jokes (or at least is willing to laugh at them); and he can carry his half of the conversation with Favs-like ease. 

"Do you need me to throw out some terrible opinions to make the evening complete? Is that your jam?" Peeeeeteeeeee asks. He has a nice smile, broad and lopsided. Genuine. "Vaccines cause toenail fungus, baby boomers are right about everything, dogs are bad?"

"Hey now." 

"Too far?"

"Too far."

Final-front-e-Peete laughs again. It's a shame Lovett is going to have to end the evening when he runs out of ways to make fun of Peete's name in his head. 

"Seriously, though," Peete says. "I think this is going well. Do you want to get out of here?"

And Lovett does, but also a part of him had been looking forward to going straight back to Favs'. Which. 

Fuck. 

Right. 

He goes home alone.

It’s not great, if he’s being honest. But it’s ok. It’s going to have to be. He's teetered on the edge of this precipice before, managed to catch himself before he fell. He just needs a break to reset things. Get back to being a normal level of codependent with his best friends. 

First thing tomorrow he's going to bully Dan Hernandez-not-Pfeiffer-though-that-would-be-hilarious into helping him test out some Lovett or Leave It material, then he's going to make Spencer put down his new boyfriend for long enough to play some serious Call of Duty, and _then_ he's going to brunch the hell out of his local queer friends with the calm and methodical determination of someone who has not crossed an invisible but highly necessary line. 

"We missed you last night," Favs says the next morning. He's wearing his earnest and approachable face, the one that says he'll actively-listen the shit out of your problems should you choose to confide them in him, which is obviously your choice, and he respects that. It's a lot for one face to do, but if any face can, it's Favs'. "Good date?"

Lovett tries not to twitch. "It was okay," he lies. "I was just, uh, I didn't want to bother you last night, you know how it is."

"Oh, we don't mind," Favs' earnest and approachable face earnestly and approachably reassures him. "It's fun."

Favs and Tommy are both smiling at him. It's more than one lonely gay should have to cope with before his second coffee. He needs to say something blandly reassuring, something to it's-not-you-it's-me them without hurting anyone's feelings. "You remember how I used to be able to say, 'Oh, it's a gay thing,' and you guys would just laugh nervously and not bring it up again?"

"Nope," Tommy says. At the same time, Favs shakes his head, "Not ringing any bells."

"We worked in the White House? Some guy from Chicago was the President? No?"

They both shake their heads again, because they're ridiculous bridge trolls who must be stopped. In fairness to them, this one cool trick to stop them pestering him stopped working around 2010, but there’s no statute of limitations on how long he gets to mock them for it. 

"_You_ had a really ugly buzzcut and _you_ had fifteen identical shirts with numbered labels so you could wear them on rotation?"

"I don't remember that," Favs says. "Do you remember that?"

"I've never owned a single shirt in my life," Tommy says. "And I can't count to fifteen." 

They're letting him off the hook, though, so he'll forgive them this -- or, at least, he'll start loudly protesting that they're both assholes and no one thinks they're funny, which amounts to the same thing. 

They segue from there into a discussion of the upcoming recording with Katie Couric, which Tommy is adorably nervous about, and that takes them through almost to lunch before Favs, that asshole, returns doggedly to the question: 

"But hey, Lovett, what do you mean, you didn't want to bother us last night? Were we being, uh, not great about things?"

"Oh, fuck you," Lovett says, which is admittedly not the mature, responsible way to deal with this, but is very much the truth of his heart. "Do you have to be so gracious and considerate all the fucking time? I miss asshole Favreau, where's he gone? Doesn't he want to mock my hats or try to gaslight me about my soft drink consumption?" 

Favs looks like a dog that's being bopped on the nose and petted behind the ears at the same time. It's adorable, because every fucking thing about him has to be adorable, doesn't it? Why he can't have bad skin and a secret embezzling habit, Lovett really doesn't know. 

He kind of wants to say something, kind of doesn’t. They haven’t done anything wrong -- it’s not their fault he’s a disaster, and they shouldn’t have to worry about him. But what would he say? It’s too big and too messy to look directly at, let alone try to put into words they can understand. And that’s even if he wanted to, which he’s not sure he does. 

So once again, Favs and Tommy prove themself to be the best friends a walking pile of neuroses in the shape of a gay Jew could ask for: they let it drop. 

#

Lovett could tell you the first three, maybe four -- no, yeah, the first four -- times he met Obama's Speechwriter, Jonathan Favreau. Has done, in interviews and talks and promotional bits for Crooked. But one of the times soon after that -- earlier enough he still hadn't found his footing, not so early he was still keeping count -- has been bobbing to the top of the morass of repressed nonsense he calls his memories. He'd like to pretend he doesn't know why. 

Favreau was effortlessly handsome in the very worst way. He had a terrible haircut and probably washed his hair, face and body with the same bottle of Axe shower gel, and he laughed entirely unselfconsciously, like no one had ever told him he was too loud or too demanding or too gay. It was gross. 

Lovett had liked him anyway, by this point. It wasn't Favreau's fault he was basically heterosexual propaganda. And he did laugh at Lovett's jokes, which was a major selling point, as well as also, you know, hiring Lovett to work in the White House. 

So this what, sixth or seventh or eighth time they met, in that month or so when the job offer had been made but the paperwork hadn't yet been processed, when Favreau would text to check in on him every couple of days, like maybe if Lovett didn't feel appreciated he'd give up on waiting for the paperwork to come through and quit before he'd even started, Favreau had invited him out to drinks with “some guys from work.”

They went to some bar filled with government employees in loosened ties and suits they'd probably slept in. Lovett was wearing rainbow shorts and a Clinton t-shirt, because fuck you, that's why, but no one even batted an eyelid -- Favreau just introduced him warmly as, "Jon Lovett, our new funniest speechwriter," and they folded him in naturally from there, powerless to deny the strength of Favreau's conviction. 

He thinks probably Mike, Cody and Shomik were there? Tommy definitely was, and a couple of others whose names have faded in the time since. 

He'd had more to drink than he'd meant -- shots had been involved, and peer pressure -- and meanwhile everyone's jackets had come off, their shirt sleeves rolled up. Every time he looked at Favreau a bit more golden skin was revealed -- another inch of well-muscled forearm on display, another button of his shirt undone to show more of his pointlessly tempting neck. Favreau's hands had been broad and expressive, his smile wide and guileless, and when he laughed at Lovett's jokes he threw his head back, exposing his throat. 

Lovett hadn't been thinking about it, really. He'd been trying to impress Favreau, trying to make his new colleagues laugh, trying to have a good time. He'd looked, but he hadn't _looked_-looked, it hadn't been anything deliberate or heated, just a matter of not averting his gaze when it snagged on Favreau's wrists or the hollow of his throat. 

He would have forgotten all about it -- certainly wouldn't be stuck on it now, eight years later, returning over and over like maybe this time he'd remember it differently -- if it hadn't been for the moment where Favreau noticed him looking. 

In college, Spencer had had a t-shirt reading, "Homophobia: The fear that men will treat you the way you treat women." Lovett thinks about that shirt a lot. He thought about it that evening, when Favreau noticed him noticing The Jon Favreau DC Experience: Ladies Ride Free. The brief but unmistakable surprise on Favreau's face, when he realized that the sassy gay man he'd hired to be funny and unexpected was not actually Will & Grace levels of nonthreateningly sexless. Looking away to give Favreau a moment, getting distracted by an argument with Tommy and Shomik, and looking back later to see the bottom couple of those buttons done up again, those shirtsleeves rolled back down a few inches. 

It hadn't been a thing. They hadn't talked about it, obviously, neither of them had ever mentioned it, and by the time they'd been working together another month or so, Favreau -- who'd already become Jon, or Favs, or That Guy Who Wants Me To Come In Before 10am Like Some Kind Of Fascist -- seemed to have forgotten about it completely, at least going by his ease with semi-nudity around the office, like they hadn't all had to watch the same training video about not doing exactly that. 

But. Lovett hates not being able to control what people think about him. Hates it. Always has. He hates most that he can't shake the suspicion that they're right, that he leaks information about himself to the world that he doesn't have access to himself -- that life is just one long summer camp where everyone else has figured out he's gay before he has. And so he knows exactly why the memory keeps coming back now, and he hates it, and he hates himself for caring, and he hates that just because he knows blah blah internalized homophobia blah blah he can't just magically uninternalize it, and most of all he hates the thought that Jon Favreau, way back before he knew Lovett well enough not to care, had seen Lovett looking and thought he was being a creep. 

And yeah, because of course it's never just one or the other, there's a second memory that’s been surfacing recently, the unwanted complement to Favs' collarbone in a DC bar, from Tommy's first week at 1309. Back then he’d been Favs' Attractive Greyhound Soulmate, Tommy Vietor, rather than just Tommy, but Lovett had liked him well enough. He was quietly funny in a sly, slightly unexpected way Lovett always enjoyed, and he clearly loved Favs while taking none of his shit, which gave Lovett hope it was possible. 

They were all four of them -- Lovett, Tommy, Mike, Cody -- trying to figure out where Tommy fit into the roommate dynamic, all calibrating their relative messiness, bitchiness, and willingness to tolerate unexplained noises in the middle of the night. Lovett was a realist, he knew his own messiness level, but he had a good feeling about Tommy’s bitchiness potential. It was the middle of the night nonsense that got him. 

Tommy had stumbled into the kitchen clutching an empty glass and wearing boxers that slid down a fraction on one hip. 

Lovett, sitting at the counter eating dry Froot Loops and wishing for death, had wolf whistled obnoxiously. Better to make it clear now who Tommy was living with, no nasty surprises later on. It was this same generous and selfless philosophy that had kept his unwashed dishes in the sink all week. 

“Whatever,” Tommy had said, going straight to the sink to down two full glasses of water. “I’m no Favreau.”

In retrospect — seven years’ retrospect, seven years of friendship and arguments and seeing Tommy at his worst — Lovett can admit Tommy probably didn’t mean anything by it. It was, he's, like, 90, 95% sure now, nothing more than an awkward attempt to brush off an unexpected compliment when all Tommy wanted was to rehydrate and go back to bed. 

But seven years of context weren’t there in the kitchen with them, and what Lovett heard was, _We’ve seen you looking. We think it’s pathetic._

“Don’t sell those abs short,” Lovett had doubled down reflexively. “This is depressed gay speechwriter pay per view.”

Tommy hadn’t laughed. Had shrugged and gone back to his room, taking his muscles and his judgment and his water with him. And Lovett had been left in the kitchen with a half eaten bowl of nutritionally dubious cereal, feeling like maybe he’d let someone into his home who didn’t like him very much at all. 

#

Lovett has done a lot of growing and changing in the last few years. It's the thing he's proudest and least proud of, all wrapped up in one. 

That's why when Peete texts him three days later, he doesn't throw his phone out the office window rather than deal with the exciting new avatar of his mis-calibrated emotional compass.

Peete Grindr (17:03): Hey, hope your fake emergency worked out ok  
Peete Grindr (17:04): I had a really good time the other night  
Peete Grindr (17:04): Don't worry, I'm not fishing for another date  
Peete Grindr (17:05): I just wanted to follow up about the youth group? I know they'd love to have you

Peete isn't just handsome, charming and able to take a hint, he also volunteers at a non-profit for LGBT+ youth, because he'll make some lucky gay the perfect husband one day. 

He wants Lovett to come do a thing for the youth group. They invite interesting and unusual -- Peete's words -- queer adults to come answer questions about their lives and work. Part careers fair, part role models. It doesn't sound like the worst way to keep himself busy until the current Situation passes. 

_When do you want me?_ Lovett sends back. He can be interesting and unusual. 

The kids are amazing. He never had anything like this as a teen -- wouldn't have known to want it -- and it's a little overwhelming, seeing it in the flesh. There are maybe fifteen kids and a handful of adults: Peete, who along with Lovett makes up the full over-thirty contingent; a short-haired latinx woman with sparkly silver Converse; and a nonbinary white person whose ears are heavy with piercings. The adults make Lovett feel deeply uncool, but the young people are just, he loves them. They laugh at his jokes and take selfies with him and give him shit that he's not on snapchat like some kind of grandpa. 

They ask him about politics and whether he thinks it's possible to change things from the inside. They ask him if he's seeing anyone and the difference between dating in DC and LA. They ask him how his parents reacted when he came out, how his friends did, if he ever wishes he was straight, if he worries about the way he looks. It's refreshing and humbling and energizing all at once. 

"We need people who can change things from the inside _and_ people who can change things from the outside," he tells them. "You don't always get to decide whether you're in or out, but you do get to decide whether you're trying to change things. And, you know, if you don't react well to authority, deadlines or wearing suits for no reason, you might find 'outside' has some pretty big selling points."

He looks to Peete before he answers the one about dating, but Peete gives him a _go ahead_ gesture, so sure, let's go. "DC is full of assholes," Lovett tells a room of queer teenagers. "Turns out, self-important sociopaths who practice their victory speeches in the shower? Not always the most considerate partners. LA may be full of weirdos, but at least there's variety." 

He tells them about his parents, about his trick for coming out in instalments. About how his mom is one of his biggest supporters. About the friendships he's made over the years, and how even the ones that didn't last helped him become who he is today. It comes out more sincere than he was expecting, but if he doesn't look at Peete or the other two adults, if he pretends he's just talking to a bunch of queer teens who've asked him honest questions, who deserve honest answers, then he finds it's okay. 

"Do I ever wish I was straight? Boy, what a question. I did. I used to. When I first realized this thing about me that it turned out everyone else already knew, if I could have just put it back in a box, return to sender, no thank you, no one ordered this, I would have. Believe me, I would have. But now? Can you imagine how terrible it would be to be straight? A dreary half-life of navy Henleys and pretending to like craft beer and never knowing the true and pure joy of Chris Hemsworth's shoulders?" 

They laugh with him. 

"But I also, I like me? I like who I am because I'm gay. I like that I know who I am. I like that I went through some stuff and because of it, I'm at a better starting point to help other people going through their stuff. I like being part of the LGBT+ community -- it's an honor and a privilege just to be in the same big tent as some of the bravest and most brilliant people I know. Being gay is, it's, when I think about the things I like about myself, the things I wouldn't change? It's up there." 

The kid who asked that question is one of the younger ones, Lovett thinks, or at least looks it. When he's finished his answer, they give him a shy smile. 

The last question, whether he worries about his looks, comes from a kid with dyed red hair and acne scars. 

"All the time," Lovett says, honest. "But one of my friends, one of the guys I do the podcast with, he's been on my case about it." This would be the point where normally he'd make a joke about how guys who look like Tommy don't get to tell guys who look like him how to feel about their chins, but that's not what he wants to say to this room, so instead he says, "I don't know, maybe this will be the year that I listen to him? What do you think?"

The kid with the dyed red hair and the acne scars looks at him appraisingly. "You're hot for your age."

Lovett lets out a surprised bark of laughter. "Thank you. That's the, honestly, that's the best compliment anyone's ever given me." 

The kid smiles. "I mean it," they say earnestly, like maybe Lovett thought they were just being kind. 

"I don't doubt you for a moment," Lovett assures them. 

There's one kid near the back dressed in scruffy black from head to toe who hasn't asked a question. When Lovett has finished taking questions, he sees them looking at him like they're trying to memorize everything about him. Lovett feels a pang of kinship so strong it almost stops him in his tracks. He's not going to be this kid's Ellen -- there is no such thing as an Ellen for this generation, thank god -- but whatever he is to this kid, it's a relief so fierce it's painful to know that this kid doesn't have to experience it alone. 

Peete thanks him afterwards, which, really, Lovett should be thanking him. This was just what he didn't know he needed. 

He sees himself out, or tries to -- Peete gets a call, and Lovett didn't work at the White House for three years without learning to recognize the face of _someone else's bad decisions have just generated a whole ton of work for me_. They say goodbye in friendly gestures, neither of them going in for the hug, and Lovett leaves with a smile on his face.

Lovett is confident he can make his way out of the rabbit warren of the community centre on his own.

Lovett is wrong. 

Instead, he ends up doubling back on himself, walking past the same doorway three times from three different directions, and generally showcasing the high standard of navigational skills that makes him grateful every day to live in an age of Google Maps. 

He's just contemplating whether to admit defeat and call Peete when he opens what he thought was the door to the newer part of the building and ends up looking into a supply closet where one of the other adults from the evening -- Sof, the latinx woman, whose sparkly silver Converse Lovett deeply coverts -- is crying.

She's not facing him, so he doesn't take the middle finger she raises to him personally. Especially when she turns round, face set in rage, and does an actual double take to see him there rather than whoever she was expecting. 

He gives her a friendly smile and tries not to get weird. "Not a great day, huh?" 

She smiles back at him weakly. Major points for effort. "Sorry, I'll get out of your way."

Lovett explains that she absolutely should not feel bad for crying in a closet, it's a very natural and normal part of life, we all cry in closets sometimes, it's those assholes who _don't_ cry in closets who should be apologizing to the rest of us. 

"Thanks," she says. She's still watery round the edges, but looks a little less like she's torn between ripping his head from his shoulders and digging a hole to crawl into and die. "Not a great day."

"Happens to the best of us," Lovett says. "As you just heard. You work here? Or are you just with Peete's group? He didn't go into the set up." 

"I work here," she says. "I do outreach work. And, uh, youth voice participation? And social media. And health and safety. And sometimes IT."

"It looks like you're doing a great job," Lovett says sincerely. "You like it here?"

"Yeah." She shrugs. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure." It's really the least he can do, after he interrupted her private crying time like this. 

"Trump. Everything. Do you think it will get better?"

Fuck, she looks young. Lovett isn't one of those assholes who thinks anyone born after 1990 is barely out of the womb -- he's happily been schooled by people ten years his junior, and he looks forward to when he can start being schooled by those born this millennium -- but he feels every year of the difference between them right now. 

"Yes," he says. He means it. "It has to. So many good people -- you and me very much included -- are working so hard to make the world better. There are enough of us, and we're all pushing away, and it might not feel like it now, but we're already making such a fucking difference. We just need to keep going."

She smiles at him through damp eyes. "Okay. I don't know if I believe you. But I'm going to try."

He looks her up on twitter the next morning. She's got kind of a boring twitter presence, just occasional retweets of politicians and gofundmes, but it links to her instagram, which is both very cute and 90% incomprehensible, full of absurdist memes that make him feel approximately twenty million years old. 

He's about to click away again, happy to leave her to her impenetrable youth culture, when he sees a picture from a few minutes after their conversation, a selfie with a sparkly rainbow filter on top. It's captioned, "I, The Professional Elder Gay, just got Elder Gayed." 

It makes him laugh out loud in the Starbucks line. He adds her on twitter, donates to the most recent three gofundmes, and picks up his order. 

Walking himself, Pundit and his iced coffee over to the office, he thinks about himself in DC six, seven, eight years ago, and he thinks, _huh_. It's not a big huh. It doesn't need its own parade. It barely needs its own thought. But huh, okay. Right now, he's not some exhausted wreck running around DC trying to convince the serious adults that he's worth his seat at the table. He's made his own path, and it's going okay. 

But maybe a few years ago he could have used an Elder Gay of his own. Someone with their shit just that bit more together to say hey, it's okay. To say, don't worry about it, we've all been there, about that time in the bar with Jon Favreau's exposed forearms and that time in the middle of the night with Tommy Vietor's depression abs. To laugh with him, maybe, to neutralize those moments before they could become poisonous. To be kind to him. 

#

Mukta's cousin Abi is visiting from UC Berkeley -- she's having kind of a rough semester, Mukta says, so she's taking a very long weekend with her cool older cousin to decompress and remember there's more to the world than the inside of a classroom. Which is great and all, Lovett fully supports it in principle, but he can't help feeling the practice is being undercut when Mukta texts him on Monday night to say that Abi is struggling with a statistics problem set and her TA isn't answering his email. 

Lovett hauls himself into work at a frankly inhuman 9:30am in order to hole up in the smaller of their two really very small meeting rooms with Abi, Pundit and the Central Limit Theorem. Sample means are discussed. Square roots are calculated. The independence and identical distribution of random variables are assumed. 

Abi has a sly sense of humor. As she gradually opens her heart to the Central Limit Theorem, she gets comfortable enough to joke with him, even sharing one amazing story from Mukta's childhood that Lovett will happily take to his grave. 

"You want to try the next couple on your own?" Lovett asks when he's satisfied she's got it down. "I'll be through in the main office if you want to check back with me." He doesn't even make finger quotes around "office", because he's doing his best to grow as a person here. 

He kind of wants her to say no, wants to stay with her in the tiny safe bubble of statistics, where figuring out the right answer is just a matter of knowing enough and understanding how to use it. But he's not an asshole, and Abi's math emergency is not his excuse for not dealing with life. 

"I'll be brave," Abi says wryly. "Thank you so much for this, seriously, I really appreciate it."

It's a good start to his day, honestly. Sof from the other night's queer adventures has already added him back and DM'd him a photo of her cat, Flavio; Abi has conquered her statistical demons; and he feels good. More settled than he has in a while. 

Back in the main office, Tommy and Favs are tossing one of Leo's toys back and forth between the two of them while Leo sleep on the couch. The obnoxious bro-ness of it is tempered slightly by the toy itself, one of the three bright pink plush flowers Lovett bought for Leo's birthday. 

They turn to the door when he enters, matching smiles greeting him. Tanya, the only other person in right now, doesn't look up from her work, because Tanya is a professional.

"Lovett!" Favs says, bright and happy as if they didn't last see each other less than an hour ago. "Do you still have that friend at the sustainability start up with the weird name?"

"You've got a weird name," Lovett says automatically. "Izzie at The Drink To Forget Foundation?"

"It's not actually called that," Tommy half-says, half-asks. 

"As good as," Lovett tells him. "They're called The Lethe Foundation, because nothing says cool young environmentalists with a relatable vision like ancient Greek mythology." 

"Cool. Can you give me her details? Dan wants to do a thing about the EPA next week." 

Lovett goes to get her contact details up on his phone and notices the iced coffee sitting on the side, ice barely melted. "Oh, hey, thanks for the--" He looks up to see which one of them brought in the coffee, but neither of them are paying attention, already back on their game of catch with Leo's bright pink hydrangea. 

Izzie isn't exactly the most keen on Lovett's straight friends, so he texts her before he passes her details over. She texts him back within moments, a string of emojis from which he discerns she's happy for Favs to have her details, she's really enjoying her work, and either they should get drinks sometimes soon or she's having an affair with a senator, it's not entirely clear. 

He's also got another DM from Sof, a picture of her cat wearing a paper hat reading, _100% that bitch._ He's not sure what he did the other night to deserve this level of animal-based communication from her today, but he's not _not_ into it. 

Their office is trying to be paperless, but Tommy volunteers up some old printouts and a sharpie on Lovett's request, not even asking why, and Lovett sets about fashioning a hat for Pundit. 

"Lovett?" Favs asks after a few minutes. "Not to interrupt the creative process, but--"

"But what, Jon?" Lovett says, not looking up. "It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing."

"But I got chocolate pretzels from the Whole Foods by the gym. You want some?"

Does Lovett want chocolate covered pretzels? Does day follow night? Does the earth orbit the sun? Does Chris Christie need an exorcism? Of course Lovett wants chocolate covered pretzels, a fact of which he appraises Favs loudly and at length.

Favs drops the whole pack of pretzels on the arm of the couch, next to the half-finished iced coffee. 

"Why are you writing 'Queen of the World' on a paper hat?" Favs asks, leaning over Lovett's shoulder the same way he's been doing since Lovett first pitched up at the White House. "Is that the contract from the Blue Apron meeting? Tommy, I thought you'd shredded that."

"Lovett needed it," Tommy says. Lovett doesn't have to look to see he's shrugging. 

"I'm trying to prove a point about Pundit's relative cuteness," Lovett explains. He shows Favs Sof's last DM of her cat. "I met someone a few days ago with very bad opinions about pets." 

"You met someone?" Tommy repeats, faux-casual in a way that fooled exactly no one. He doesn't push, though, and nor does Favs past a single, "Cool." Clearly Lovett's post-Peete request for them to back off has had some effect.

Lovett doesn't know how he feels about that. 

"Yeah," Lovett says, because he is at least 40% troll by volume, and he's not going to let his own internal whatever get in the way of a good bit. "I really think it could be something. I've got a good feeling about this. We just, you know when you click with someone? When you're just like, huh, yeah, me and this 23-year-old lesbian youth worker could really make a go of it." 

Tommy throws Leo's pink plush flower at Lovett, which, okay, he _maybe_ deserves, though it doesn't stop him protesting at the homophobic bullying and harassment this office is steeped in. 

Abi pokes her head out of the meeting room just as Lovett is informing them that he's never liked either of them, they are the true barriers to his success in this cruel and uncaring world. 

"Please," Favs says to Abi when he's stopped laughing. "Take him off our hands."

She smiles shyly at Favs and Tommy, then more genuinely at Lovett, which, he's not going to lie, is pretty validating. "I just wanted to say thank you again. It's really, yeah. Thank you."

He says something generically reassuring, and she gives Pundit a quick scritch behind the ears before leaving. He turns back to see Favs and Tommy looking at him with matched soft, fond expressions that hit him too hard to be ignored. 

He doesn't like this. At all. It's not who he wants to be, or how he wants to be around them. It makes him feel small and grubby in the worst way -- stealing something more than friendship from two people who give him so much, so freely. 

He needs to, well, if not deal with this, at least deal with the part he can deal with. He needs to be his own Elder Gay. 

"Right," he says. "I've got some serious and important photos of Pundit to stage, but we're going out for lunchtime tacos. My treat."

Because Lovett is a consummate professional with a strong work ethic and a responsible attitude, he even does some real work between sending Sof the best three Pundit photos from the mini-shoot and taco time. 

Fortunately for everyone, Favs and Tommy only make cursory attempts to get him to explain what's going on, though when he just smiles and lets Favs take as long as he wanted to pick the same thing he always gets, Tommy does glare at him suspiciously and ask if he's dying. 

“A fella can’t take his two best pals out for tacos without the shadow of impending death bearing down on him?” Lovett gives him a charming smile. 

“You’re dying,” Tommy says. Then, to Favs: “Jon, just have the chicken special with extra jalapeños and let Lovett read us his will.”

“You’d feel like shit if I _were_ dying,” Lovett says.

“I would," Tommy says with disarming sincerity, ruining Lovett's perfectly good joke. 

“Dark,” Favs says, finally putting the menu down. Then, to Lovett, “So, what’s up?”

Lovett is deeply tempted to start an argument about how he doesn’t have to have a reason to take his best friends out for Tex-Mex, but (a) he does have a reason, which kind of undercuts his point, and (b) avoidance isn’t very Mature Elder Gay On Top Of His Shit. 

“I need to tell you a thing,” he says, going straight for his own jugular. “It's not a big thing to hear, I think? But it's kind of big — or, medium, maybe — for me to say."

He pauses. Favs is practically vibrating with supportive energy, and Tommy is just looking at him with fond, serious eyes. He feels a swell of love for the both of them, his two basic straight boys, ready and willing to be Understanding And Supportive about whatever he's deemed taco-worthy. 

"You may not know this," he says, inviting them in on the joke, "but sometimes I don't share my gay shit with you until it's undergone a certain amount of post-production editing. Some special effects added, a few blemishes removed, that kind of thing. Which I stand by my right to do as I choose -- I am, after all, _delightfully_ capricious -- but if I only ever do that, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to do the other thing, to share the pre-post-production -- the raw footage -- when I want to." 

This is the point where normally one of them would tease him about the metaphor running away from him. Instead, they're both sitting quietly, waiting for whatever he needs to say next. He owes them so many tacos. 

“Ok. So. When you grow up gay, without, like, a lot of positive and affirming role models, sometimes that's not the greatest, and you can end up defining yourself by what you’re not, because, you know, that's what you can see. Not into women, not into beige slacks, not into frat parties." He ticks the list off on his fingers. Deep breath. He can do this. "And. Not one of those perverts. Not one of the pathetic, deluded f-- gays who goes straight from creeping in the locker room to being the fifty year old estranged uncle you don’t trust with the kids, do not pass Go, do not collect any normal developmental milestones."

He's said it all in a rush, that last bit. Favs' jaw is set; Tommy is sitting up a little straighter. 

“And so the thing is I thought I was over that? Like, gay marriage is legal, Ellen has a net worth of half a billion, I’ve sucked a lot of willing and enthusiastic cock. We’ve all moved on. But right now it's coming up again, enough to fuck me up, and I wanted you to know. I mean, I wanted to tell you while it’s still fresh. Before I’ve had the chance to workshop it into a hilarious rant for an adoring audience of millions.”

They don't laugh at his kind-of joke, but he'll forgive them that for the hand Favs has put on his, the knee Tommy has gently bumped against his under the table. 

"That really fucking sucks," Favs says in one breath. "Thank you for telling me. Us."

"What he said," Tommy says. "It's shitty raw footage to have, but I'm really glad you're sharing it with us."

The waiter arrives and, unexpectedly, Favs doesn't pull his hand back, holding on while he orders his chicken special with extra jalapeños. 

They give each other shit for most of the rest of the lunch -- Tommy has bought some new shoes that look exactly like all his other shoes, which is good for at least an hour's worth of material -- but circle back to Lovett's Delicate Feelings at the end. 

"Is there anything we can do? Or not do?" Tommy asks. 

Lovett has always leaned into the _you can’t say it if I say it first_ of being a gay Jewish disaster, but even he can't see a good answer here. He's unhappy enough admitting the other half of the problem to himself, let alone to them. 

He just needs to get over it. That's all there is to it. He needs to accept what he has and be happy about it, not keep reaching with both hands for something no one is offering. 

“Just be my friends,” he says, meaning it as much as he’s ever meant anything. “You’re good at that.”

#

Lovett comes home from a Saturday morning run to find Tommy replacing the rubber gaskets in his kitchen sink. At least, that's what Tommy claims he's doing, and it's bizarre enough it might even be true. 

"Why, Thomas, are you replacing the rubber gaskets in my sink? Were they not gasketing enough? Were they gasketing too much? What did my rubber gaskets used to do, and why had their time come?" 

Tommy starts to explain the purpose of rubber gaskets in a functioning plumbing system, which is the worst possible outcome here. 

"Shush, sweet Thomas," Lovett tells him, high on his exercise endorphins and the lightness he's felt since Tuesday's Taco Confession Time. "I don't care. I'm sure you've done excellent work and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart, but my ears are too gay to be subjected to this." 

Tommy just smiles at him. "Not a problem." 

It's a lot. Tommy is wearing a soft grey tee and well-fitting blue jeans, and to be honest it's pretty offensive, but Lovett will forgive him. 

"Jon's coming over in a bit," Tommy says. "Go take a shower."

Lovett isn't exactly _opposed_ to handsome men telling him what to do, but honor demands he makes at least a token protest, informing Tommy that this is how fascism wins. He could have had plans.

He comes back down to Tommy and Favs and fresh bagels from that store on Beverly and Fairfax that he would live in if he could. The whole scene is somewhere on the border between nice and suspiciously nice. He decides to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

"I got Pundit a new chew toy," Favs says, holding up a tote bag containing several dog toys. "But then I had to get one for Leo, and there was a deal if you bought three or more, so." He gives them a rubber bone each. Pundit chews hers contentedly from between Lovett's feet; Leo starts running circles around the kitchen with the bone in his mouth. The half dozen other toys go on the counter. "I don't know. I thought it was nice." 

"It is nice," Tommy says. 

Suspiciously nice, Lovett thinks, and takes a bite of his bagel before he can say it out loud. This is, he assumes, their overly involved way of trying to make him feel better about his sad gay hangups. It's not their fault that they're sculpted out of pure weapons grade boyfriend material, nor should it be their problem that his unquiet heart can't tell the difference between a nice gesture and an overture. 

Favs informs them that after the bagels, he and Tommy are going to rehang Lovett's kitchen door. 

"Hot," Lovett says reflexively, making Favs laugh and Tommy blush. 

He lets Favs and Tommy talk over each other explaining why they need to do this -- something about sticking, sagging and being out of plumb, whatever that means -- and waits until they're done before asking if they do know his landlord can just pay a guy to do that?

"Yes, but would they bring you bagels?" Tommy asks. He raises his bagel in a _cheers_ gesture, then takes an obnoxiously big bite. 

For a moment -- like prodding a bruise -- Lovett lets himself imagine this is more than it is. That these two handsome, charming men have invited themselves round to make his life better not just because they love him, which they do, but because they want something more. It hurts less than he thought it would. There's the pang of want, the ache of not getting, and sure, a bit of shame, but not as much as he was expecting. 

He's not going to magically shake his every fucked up bit of damaged whatever in a few days, but he'll settle for this, a little less pain, a little less feeling like he's doing something wrong by just being human. 

Turns out talking about shit helps. Who the fuck knew?

He feels the urge to DM Sof a picture of Pundit. 

"How do you know how to rehang a door?" he asks Favs suspiciously. Tommy he can believe -- Tommy was always doing pointless bits of handiwork back in 13bro9, a poorly sublimated urge to fix things that everyone politely didn't mention -- but Jon Favreau's many and varied talents do not include power tools. 

Favs doesn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. "Tommy taught me when I moved in," he says, nodding his head in the direction of his house. "We fixed them all that first week he was down from San Fran." 

Of course they did. A fun activity to fit in between chopping logs and microbrewing their own beer, or whatever else it is the modern heterosexual does to affirm his masculinity. 

"Actually," Tommy says when Lovett voices this. Then he stops. Visibly changes his mind about what he's going to say. "Did 'we' fix them?"

Favs laughs. "I made a very glamorous assistant."

Lovett thinks about pushing Tommy on what he was going to say, but there's always a chance he'll push too far, and he doesn't want to ruin the moment, this surprising gift of a morning with its abundance of bagels and two of his favorite people doing their best to keep him from living in squalor. 

Pundit offers him her new toy. 

"Thank you, sweetheart," he says sincerely. He examines it for a moment, noticing for the first time the little rainbow bone motif along the sides, before giving it back to her. "Your Uncle Jon has good taste in doodle toys."

Tommy has brought along a whole tool bag. Lovett would take umbrage -- he has, after all, successfully assembled many a flatpack furniture item -- but he doesn't recognise half the tools inside Tommy's bag, so. 

"What are you actually planning to do here?" Lovett asks when Tommy gets out the power drill. "Am I going to need a new doorframe? And I will only be accepting explanations that don't use the words plumb, hinge pins, or jamb."

"Door not vertical," Tommy says with an eye roll Lovett chooses to interpret as fond. "Shuts bad. Rehang door. Make vertical. Shuts good."

"We workshopped that,” Favs says. "Three external consultants and a half-day retreat." He beams when the two of them laugh. 

"I'd offer you a pointlessly hoppy craft beer," Lovett tells them, "but there's a voice in my head that sounds a lot like Dan Pfeiffer telling me beer and power tools don't mix." 

"Why do you only listen to Dan when it involves making others suffer?" Tommy asks, but he's already helped himself to a glass of water from Lovett's newly en-gasketed faucet, and is plugging in the power drill with the air of a man determined not to let Lovett's inhospitality get in the way of his carpentry. 

The two of them -- Tommy and Favs -- make a door rehanging dream team, in Lovett's inexpert opinion. Tommy certainly makes it look easy, and Favs follows instruction cheerfully, leaving Lovett to heckle from the sidelines with increasing abandon. 

"Wait, wait, are you sure that's level?" he asks every few minutes, even though all Tommy is doing is unscrewing the hinges. Both of Tommy's hands are full, so he can't even flip Lovett off. It's heaven. 

"Careful, you don't want to strip the thread," he offers when Tommy first touches power tool to screw, followed a moment later by, "Is it supposed to make that noise?"

His personal favorite, which earns him a solid five second glare from Tommy and an actual groan from Favs, is, "Oh, you're doing it _that_ way, okay. Interesting."

Tommy has bought new hinges, because of course he has. Apparently Lovett's hinges aren't straight, which Lovett manfully only makes three or four jokes about. He's in such a good mood from the fourth joke -- "Must be from all that banging" -- he doesn't even ask Tommy if he's _sure_ he's putting the door back the right way round. 

The Patriots are playing the Dolphins, so after all that door exertion Lovett dozes off on his couch with Pundit and Leo nestled up against him. It's a perfect late morning / early afternoon nap, warm soft quiet indulgent, made all the better for the sounds of Tommy and Favs doing their thing around him. 

He wakes up slowly, contentment in his chest, enjoying the snippets of sports discourse that float through his post-nap consciousness -- 'pass interference' and 'bad fumble' and 'soft hands' -- that he no longer associates with anything but his friends. 

He's about to slip back under when Tommy's tone shifts: "So, hey, man."

The right thing to do would be to let them know he's awake. But this is his best chance to find out what they think they're doing here, and really, he's making it easy on them, letting them tell him without it getting awkward. 

"Yeah?" Favs prompts, clearly attuned to the change in conversation. 

"I think I owe you an apology."

Lovett doesn't have to see Favs to know he's barely restraining his urge to reassure Tommy that he's never done anything wrong in his entire life. 

"You remember when we used to --" Tommy tails off. He's probably making some sort of vague gesture or facial expression that cues Favs into exactly what he's talking about. 

"Yeah?" Favs says. Then: "Oh! Yeah. During the campaign." 

Lovett badly wishes he could open his eyes, but he's committed now. He's 90% sure they're talking about their strictly heterosexual threesomes, but he'd like to read their faces to be certain. 

"I think I was kind of a dick about it, after?" Tommy says. "Sorry. I never meant to, uh. I've been thinking about it, since getting that wedding -- commitment ceremony -- invite, and what Lovett said, and. Do you remember in Lake Forest? I shouldn't have brushed you off like that."

"You were fine, it was fine, don't worry about it," Favs says, clearly unable to stop himself. "I shouldn't have made it weird."

"You didn't do anything wrong." 

"And you did? Come on, it's fine."

In the silence that follows, he'd put money on Tommy giving Favs one of those flat looks that calls bullshit on Favs' everything. 

"Okay," Tommy says at last. "But if it isn't fine, or if it wasn't fine once, then that's on me, and I'm sorry. I should never have made you feel like we weren't in that together."

If Lovett were in this conversation -- and there's no reason he should be, there's no part of this conversation that involves him -- he would nudge it along a little, say something to let out a little of the pressure before going back in for the kill. But he's not, so he lets them sit quietly for a few more minutes, silent except for the low murmur of the football pundits.

He fake-wakes up by nudging Pundit into action, and the two of them give a convincing performance as two souls reunited after a long and painful separation. It smoothes the transition into wakefulness, and if he takes a moment to steady himself, Pundit will always and forever forgive him. 

#

Monday morning, pre-Pod, Sof texts Lovett: _Did you fund Georgie's surgery?_

Lovett's in the middle of a meeting with a potential sponsor, so he just replies, _Who's Georgie?_ and goes back to pretending he's really interested in how better mattresses can improve their listeners' lives. 

He gets out of the meeting to a series of links from Sof -- Georgie's gofundme, which turns out to be one of the ones he funded on a whim the other morning; Georgie's instastory of finding out she's hit her funding target; a Turn Left opinion piece on how “painfully deluded liberal one percenters” treat gofundmes as “modern day indulgences” to pay off their guilt. 

The first two links make him smile, the last one makes him laugh out loud. 

_You've got me there,_ he texts back. He follows it with a picture of Pundit and Leo sitting on the office couch. 

She sends him back a picture of Georgie holding her cat. 

"Who are you texting?" Tommy asks, nudging Lovett's shoulder as they enter the recording studio together. 

"What? Oh, Sof, my new nemesis. Why?"

"Nothing. You just --" Tommy pauses. "You looked happy. It was nice." 

Favs is coming from a meeting across town, and everyone else is busy with the actual technical business of setting up a podcast to record, so there's no one for Lovett to exchange a confused glance with. He satisfies himself with saying, "Okay," slowly, making it clear that Tommy is the one bringing the casserole of awkwardness to this particular potluck. 

Of course, he then says this out loud, because it's too good a line to waste. 

"Whatever," Tommy says, but he laughed first, so Lovett will count it as a win. "How's your kitchen door?"

It's opening and shutting beautifully, which is deeply irritating, so Lovett says, "It fell off. Took the whole doorframe with it."

Tommy just grins at him. "You're welcome." 

"What part of that sounded like a thank you? I could lose my security deposit. My entire house could be a crumbling deathtrap now you've taken out the keystone. You're a monster, treating my tragedy like gratitude."

At that point Favs arrives with iced coffee for all three of them, because he is a hero and a scholar, and they get on with the serious and important business of podcasting. 

Afterwards, Favs talks non-stop for ten minutes about how "your friend Izzie from Lethe" is so clever and funny and full of insight and lacking in shit-taking, which is obviously correct but still nice to hear. It gets them back to their desks, where everyone puts their headphones on and pretends to work. Lovett is still going back and forth on the format of his show, and while he knows they'll try a bunch of things and stick with what works, a large part of him wants it to be perfect the first time. 

Just as Lovett's starting to think about lunch, Tommy throws a balled up piece of paper at his face. 

Lovett barely squawks at all, given the level of provocation. 

"What the hell, Vietor? What happened to, 'Excuse me, Lovett, could I have your attention for a moment?'"

"Excuse me, Lovett," Tommy says sweetly. "Could I have your attention for a moment?"

Favs, that traitor, just laughs. It's the bystander effect in action. 

"You've got it now," Lovett says snippily. "What?"

"Oh, nothing." Tommy smiles and goes back to his work, because Tommy is a grade-A cast-iron asshole and death is too good for him. 

"I hate you," Lovett informs him solemnly. 

If he goes for lunch now, he'll be hungry again by 4pm, but his concentration is now shot thanks to Tommy's schoolroom bullying. 

He thinks he might amuse himself for precious seconds by seeing what important Crooked document Tommy wasted on taunting him, but when he uncrumples it, it turns out to be a blank piece of paper on which Tommy has written, _Hi!_

"I hate you so much," Lovett tell him. 

He writes, _Boston breeds them weird,_ on the paper, balls it up again, and throws it at Favs. 

By the time he does break for lunch, the paper reads: 

_Hi!_ (Tommy to Lovett)  
_Boston breeds them weird_ (Lovett to Favs)  
_Your face breeds them weird_ (Favs to Lovett)  
_This is workplace harassment and I WILL report it_ (Lovett to Tommy)  
_Stop bullying Lovett_ (Tommy to Favs)  
_Make me_ (Favs to Tommy)  
_I tried :( _ (Tommy to Lovett)  
_I HATE YOU_ (Lovett on both halves of the paper he has just torn in two so he can throw them at Tommy and Favs simultaneously, what the fuck, he works with _children_, this is ridiculous, Sarah Koenig never had to deal with this working on Serial)

He comes back with takeout for Favs and Tommy, otherwise they'll never eat, and finds them in the middle of a not-quite-discussion, not-quite-argument. 

When they see him, they both immediately shut up, which isn't suspicious or awkward at all. 

"Tuna poke for you," Lovett says, dumping the box on Favs' desk, "and salmon poke for you," he continues, putting the other box down on top of Tommy's unnecessarily tall pile of unnecessarily depressing books. "Don't let me interrupt."

They talk over each other to explain he's not interrupting anything, it was nothing, it's fine. Fortunately Mukta has her earphones in and everyone else is out for lunch now, so there are no witnesses to this debacle. 

"Right," he says slowly. "You want to try that again?"

If he's got them one-on-one, Favs is vastly easier to break than Tommy, but when they're together it adds an element of randomness to proceedings: Favs doesn't want to disappoint Lovett by keeping a secret, but he doesn't want to disappoint Tommy by sharing it. 

"Not really?" Tommy says, scrunching his face up like an apologetic kindergarten teacher. 

"Tommy's being stubborn," Favs says. 

Tommy glares at him. Favs glares back. Lovett is no closer to unravelling this mystery. 

"Fine, have it your way," Lovett says, regretting his decision not to let them both starve to death. "I never liked either of you." 

Favs doesn't _quite_ crumple like cheap paper under this intense emotional pressure, but it's a close thing.

Instead, it’s Tommy who sort of caves: “Sorry, Lovett. We’ll tell you soon, I promise. I just need to get this asshole to stop trying to fall on his sword first.”

“I’m not--” Favs cuts himself off. Turns to Lovett to say, “Tommy’s the one being pointlessly self-sacrificing. Obviously.”

“Neither of you can be trusted with sharp things,” Lovett says, because seriously, he’s pretty confident they’re both being ridiculous about whatever this is. “Don’t think you can mollify me with this cryptic bullshit,” he continues, thoroughly mollified. “Tell me soon or sleep with one eye open.” 

It’s a useful barometer of his own mood, if he’s being honest with himself. He’s doing okay, so he can let this go. If he were still feeling the way he did before all this disgusting and unnecessary personal growth, being excluded would worm its way under his skin, annoy him in a way that he’d have to work at to make funny. But instead he lets them have their secret, confident they’ll tell him eventually. 

#

Lovett has a scouting trip to the Improv that evening. He's been there a few times since moving here, but this is the first time since they've booked the Lab for his new show. He's going to go, eat dinner, watch a few sets, get a feel for it as a performance space, try not to freak out too much. It's going to be fine. He's going to have Favs up there with him, Tommy in the audience; even if he crashes and burns, they'll laugh at his jokes. 

The thought fills him with enough goodwill towards future Tommy and Favs that when present, about-to-leave-the-office Tommy starts making noises about how he doesn't have any plans this evening, what are you doing, Jon, nothing? How about you, Lovett? Oh, really, you're going to the Improv, what a complete surprise... Lovett barely rolls his eyes at all before inviting them along. 

The evening starts out okay -- they get burgers and beers and give each other shit about being too old and uncool to recognize any of the names performing tonight -- but then between one bite of mediocre burger and the next, Favs turns serious: 

"Hey, so. You never really gave us an answer, before. Is there anything either of us can do, or stop doing?"

Lovett doesn't know what he's talking about, and then abruptly does. This is about what Tommy asked during taco confession time. What can they do to undo his damage? Or at least not aggravate it further?

He reacts without even thinking about it: "Go back in time and tell 16-year-old me--" But, honestly, he can't finish that sentence. What would he even tell 16-year-old him? Or 26-year-old him? _It's okay. You're okay, What you want doesn't make you any less than anyone else._ Would either past self believe him? "I don't know." 

Tommy puts down his beer. "I wish I could tell him about all the amazing things he's going to do." He sounds almost angry. "That no one who knows him would ever doubt his integrity or his decency."

He says some other things, too, but through a thick miasma of embarrassment, Lovett finds himself thinking, _Huh._ He'd never thought of it that way -- a question of integrity, of decency -- but it is, of course it is. This one remaining bit of shame that's somehow tangled itself so much more deeply inside him than the rest, it's spent a lifetime whispering to him that to be gay is to start with a deficit of both, and only by fitting into the narrowest of spaces, obeying the harshest of rules, can he hope to catch up. 

It's kind of startling to realize that here and now -- sitting in the Improv picking at his sweet potato fries while his two best friends try to stare him into being less fucked up. He feels a spark of something too small to be anger at Tommy -- how can Tommy get it, how can he be the one to put his finger on this, when it's Lovett who's dragging himself through it?

"You're so good, Lovett," Favs says. "I'm sorry, I know you hate it when I just say shit like that, but you are. You're one of the best people I know."

And hey, okay, he was wrong. It _is_ anger he's feeling. At everyone and everything that burrowed itself under his skin. But also at everyone and everything that didn't protect him, that didn't tell him -- at 6, at 16, at 26 -- that he was good, that he was decent, that noticing the curve of another man's shoulders didn't make him a predator. 

What was it he'd said to them when he'd broached it before? _When you grow up gay, without positive and affirming role models_ \-- but that wasn't it, was it? Or that wasn't all of it, anyway. When you grow up gay, without anyone to protect you. When you grow up gay, without people working overtime to counteract the steady drip of poison society so helpfully provides. When you grow up gay, with parents who love you as well as they can, but who simply don't know what you're facing, let alone how to be on your side. When you grow up gay, and the words you needed come so much later than the damage you received. 

Fuck it. He was owed better than this. He and Sof and Peete and Izzie and every single one of those kids at that youth group were and are all owed better than this. Not just an absence of pain, though that would have been good, but the promise of joy. He loves being gay. Genuinely, honestly, loves sucking dick and flirting with men and wearing pink baseball hats and queer solidarity and Pride and all of it, the whole package. Being outside the prescribed norms is freeing, it's a gift. It's a great and honest joy. 

He loves wearing whatever the fuck he wants and it being gay because he is. He loves the rush of making a hot guy laugh, of leaning in close and touching a guy's arm and knowing they both feel the spark. He loves that Peete trusted him with the hope of a dozen queer teenagers and he could repay that trust simply by being his whole, honest, exceedingly gay self. 

Why did no one tell him that, when he was 16 and miserable? Why did no one tell him that, when he was 26 and trying to be five million different things at once? That's what he should go back in time and tell his past selves. Not _it's okay_ but _it's a gift_. Not _you're okay_ but _you're going to love it_. 

Okay. Okay. Maybe he can't tell himself that age 6 or 16 or 26, but he can tell himself that now. And if Favs and Tommy want this part of him, they can have it. 

"Tommy," Lovett says, making himself look Tommy over and appreciate him, strong arms and sharp cheekbones and mobile, inviting mouth. This is not a shameful part of being gay, this is not _if I joke about it first you can't use it against me_. It can just be something uncomplicatedly good: my handsome friend has great arms, what a lovely treat for me. "You are really fucking hot." No. That feels too much like a thing he would have said anyway, a joke and a challenge together. Try again. "I'm glad you don't have your depression abs anymore, but your arms, my god, I swear when you wear a tight t-shirt my productivity drops by 20%."

Tommy blushes and squirms but his eyes stay patient and warm. Then he gives Lovett this tiny smirk and rolls his sleeves up as far as they'll go, puts his hands behind his head to show off his arms to full effect. It's perfect, honestly, exactly the response he didn't know he needed: _You've looked? Cool. Keep looking._

Also, blindingly hot. This may be helping the one problem Lovett has, but it's sure as fuck not going to help the other. Still, in this moment, he can't bring himself to mind, not when Tommy's arms are a good thing about being gay. 

"Hey," Favs says, "I'm hot too, right?"

It takes Lovett a good couple of minutes to stop laughing, but while he's drawing breath he thinks fondly of how far Favs has come since those first days in DC. It's a warm, only slightly wistful feeling. 

"You're hot too," Lovett reassures him. Then, once again, he makes himself look. It's harder with Favs -- if he's honest, it's always been harder with Favs -- but he does it anyway, takes in Favs' lush mouth and his long-fingered, steady hands and his broad shoulders and says, meaning it, "_Damn._ I mean, those hands."

Favs flashes him a pleased-surprised grin, then smirks at Tommy. "I got a damn."

"Fair," Tommy says, tipping his head slightly to concede the point. 

Favs reaches over and gives Lovett's hand a squeeze, an echo of taco confession time that makes Lovett feel nothing but fond. Favs' hands: another good thing about being gay. "Can I say something else sincere?"

Lovett rolls his eyes performatively, but he's touched Favs is asking, knows that if he says no, Favs will shut up, let him turtle back into his protective shell just a little. "You might as well, this evening's a bust anyway."

Favs opens his mouth. Closes it again. Laughs quietly to himself. "I have too many things I want to say. But. Okay, let's start with this one. I know you you keep saying it's not on us, and I'm not, like, I know I'm not the center of the universe. But. If I ever, maybe before, if I ever made you feel like you couldn't say stuff like that to me? You've got to know that was a flaw in me, not in you."

And damn. Trust Jon fucking Favreau to get right to the heart of it. 

Tommy nudges Favs' shoulder supportively. "'I know I'm not the center of the universe, but’" -- the Jon Favreau Guide to Humility."

Lovett snorts, grateful beyond the telling of it to get a moment to compose his thoughts. "Like you haven't also found some way to convince yourself this is entirely your fault."

Tommy holds his hands up in mock surrender. "Hey, I was just going to think it, not say it out loud. You know, the New England way." 

Lovett laughs, then makes himself answer Favs. "You didn't help," he concedes. It's a relief to say, more than he was expecting. He feels his eyes pricking with the hurt he’s worked hard to keep buried. It’s distantly embarrassing, but it’s real, and it pushes him to continue: "But you've toned down on the affronted heterosexuality over the years."

Favs winces. "Yeah. I fucked that one up pretty badly." He's looking down at his plate. That’s good. It gives Lovett the chance to swipe quickly at his eyes, sort out that nonsense before it escalates. 

Tommy kicks Favs under the table. "We all did," he says. "It's easier to be cruel to someone else than deal with your own shit."

Well, that's bleak. Lovett says as much.

Tommy snort-laughs acknowledgement. "But we're better people now, right?"

"I mean, I was perfect the whole time," Lovett says. "But yeah, sure, you guys are catching up."

Favs finally looks up. "We're trying, at least." He says it to both of them. 

That they are. Lovett bumps his knee companionably against Tommy's, reaches out to nudge his foot against Favs'. "You're doing great," he says softly. Then, changing pace: "Right, that was _so much more_ sincerity than I am equipped to handle, please can we just eat some food and get ready to watch some kind and generous people warm up my stage for me?" 

Tommy steals one of his fries and dunks it in Favs' ketchup. "I can't believe you haven't heard of any of them. You're supposed to be the one with his finger on the pulse of the modern comedy scene."

"Okay, first of all --"

#

Tuesday night, Favs and Tommy invite themselves over to Lovett's again. He gets it, but he doesn't love it, honestly. He was planning on a night in with his dog and his edibles, playing Diablo 3 and having no emotional revelations whatsoever.

It's a weird vibe. They let themselves in, put the takeout down on the coffee table, and sit either side of him on the couch. They've even changed their clothes since leaving work. 

Lovett has too -- going from his work-appropriate sweatpants without the hole in the thigh to his way-more-comfortable sweatpants with one -- but they've changed up. Tommy is wearing dark slacks and a shirt with a collar. Jon is wearing jeans and one of his tighter Henleys. If it weren't for the size of the takeout containers or the fact they've taken their shoes off, Lovett would think they were on their way out somewhere, just stopping off to feed their pet recluse.

"Hey," Tommy says, wiping his hands on his slacks. He looks nervous, which is not and never has been a good sign. They've already had this conversation, Lovett is pretty sure. He was feeling good about it -- or at least was until now. 

"Hi?" Lovett goes for. "Is this-- What's happening, exactly? The door still isn't hanging right, so instead you're taking it on a date to Olive Garden?"

They laugh, but awkwardly. Tommy scrubs his face with his hands. Favs clutches Leo. It's all very unsettling. 

"We used to pick up together," Favs says. He's not looking at them. "Me and Tommy. On the campaign."

"I know?" Lovett isn't sure where this is going, but he doubts he has the energy for it. "We had this conversation? You used to pick up together, it was a good time, it's over now, we all do hilarious things on the campaign trail like have bad hair and threesomes, it's totally fine."

"Have you ever in your life taken a hint?" Favs asks, sounding a little fond, a little fascinated. Leo jumps down from his lap to go bother Pundit. 

What? "I take hints all the time," Lovett protests. 

Unbidden but unsurprising, the memory of that DC bar and the first hint Jon Favreau ever gave him -- don't make this gay, don't make this weird -- rises up. What is surprising is that this time it doesn't hurt. He pokes at it, like he's exploring an aching tooth, but all he feels is gentle sympathy towards his past self and a wry kind of affection for past Favs, so young and unsteady that he bristled at a single look from a gay man. 

"Jon tried to talk to me about it afterwards, about what it meant that we’d had sex together," Tommy says. "And I told him. Yeah. That it didn't have to be a thing, you know? That it didn’t make us gay." He's staring straight ahead at Lovett's TV and the Diablo 3 menu screen. "Emphatically."

"Is this payment for the door?" Lovett asks. He doesn't mean it, but he feels entitled to a token protest before he's all empathic and shit. "I get free carpentry, but in return I have to sit here -- on my couch, with my dog, in front of my Diablo 3 -- and listen to you work out your feelings about sex you had a decade ago? Because that seems like kind of a bum deal."

Favs' hand gives a deeply familiar twitch. It means he wants Lovett to be quiet, but he doesn't want to feel guilty about telling him to be quiet. Lovett saw it a lot in their DC days. It's not his favorite of Favs' tics, but since he was planning to shut up anyway, he might as well let Favs have the win. 

There's a long silence before Tommy speaks again. "I was wrong. It is a thing. It was a thing. If I'd been braver, it could have been a thing." 

Is Tommy coming out right now? Does Tommy realize he's coming out right now? From his splotchy cheeks and too-steady breathing, Lovett's going to go with yes on both counts, but this doesn't feel like a coming out speech. It feels like the start of a longer conversation. 

"Hey," Favs protests. "It's not all on you." 

"It's not all on me," Tommy agrees in that way that means he absolutely thinks it's all on him. "When you said the other day, Lovett, about how you didn't want to be That Creep, I think it, yeah. That might have been me, too?"

Lovett’s heart breaks for this younger version of Tommy, too scared to reach for what was offered. It’s the same compassion he’s been learning to feel for his own younger self, but ten-fold, a hundred-fold. Tommy deserved better than this. 

"If I was getting anything out of Jon being there, I'd have been taking advantage," Tommy continues. "So if I didn't want to be --" Gross. A creep. "-- then I couldn't be into him." 

"I wish I'd known," Favs says softly. 

"I wish _I'd_ known," Tommy says. "But yeah. So."

"Right," Favs picks up when it becomes clear that was the end of Tommy's sentence. "It was less complicated for me? Tommy said to put it back in the box, so I put it back in the box. And then I was your boss, so that went in the box, too, and now we're here, and I thought if there was something I needed to do, you'd know and you'd tell me?"

It's so sweetly Favs that Lovett can't even be mad about it. 

Favs continues, still addressing Lovett, "But I kind of got the impression from what you said the other day that if you ever, if there was a box for you -- not that there has to be -- then yours might actually be harder to open than mine. More things keeping it shut."

More things keeping it shut. That was one way to put it. Lovett wishes he had Pundit to cuddle. She's off with Leo doing who knows what, but at least doing it quietly. 

He doesn't understand what's happening here. 

Tommy laughs a little roughly. "Is this out of line? Are we out of line? You've got to know we're not just here to tell you this as, like, an interesting fact. But you don't seem --" He trails off. "It _can_ just be an interesting fact, if you like, about your two friends who are dating each other. If there's no box for you?"

The word box has lost all meaning now. Lovett shakes himself -- actually, physically shakes himself -- and tries to arrange the world into its new order. Favs and Tommy are not straight. Favs and Tommy like each other. Favs and Tommy like him? 

“We’re dating each other?” Favs asks Tommy softly. 

“Are we not?” Tommy asks. His words are slow, a little unsteady. “I want to.” Then, a little firmer: “I should have said yes when you asked me nine, ten years ago. But I’m saying it now. Yes. I want to date you. If Lovett wants in, I want all three of us to be together, the way we talked about --” And that is for sure something Lovett is going to want to know everything about later. “-- but if he doesn’t, I still want to be with you.” 

It should be uncomfortable to be sitting quite literally in the middle of this conversation, Favs on one side of him and Tommy on the other, but Lovett just feels fond. Calm. Happy for them, and even happier when Favs says, smiling, “I want that too.”

His brave boys. That, more than anything, decides it for him:

"Okay then," Lovett says. Let's try that again. Favs and Tommy are not straight. Favs and Tommy like each other. Favs and Tommy, his sweet, ridiculous, passionate, impossibly good, unnecessarily handsome friends, that Favs and Tommy, are not straight and they like each other and they like him. 

“Is that what you were arguing about?” he asks. He doesn’t need to specify when -- before, in the office, when they wouldn’t tell him what it was about but they would tell him the other was being a martyr. 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, bashful. “He said if you didn’t want both of us, I should still go for it, see if I had a shot, and I said, what the fuck, obviously _he_ should still go for it.”

Lovett feels one corner of his mouth twitch with a smile he's not quite ready to let out. “Yes, yes, you were both very noble and self-sacrificing.” And then, because how the fuck could he ever say no to either of them, let alone both: “Okay. Okay then. Let’s do this. 

Tommy's arms are a good thing about being gay. Favs' hands are a good thing about being gay. But if this is really happening -- instead of, for example, being a near-death hallucination he's experiencing as part of a stroke -- then Tommy and Favs are about to become his new favorite thing about being gay. 

"I hear the two of you used to be quite the team, back on that campaign trail,” Lovett says, finally letting that smile out. “You want to show me what you've got?" 

He asks a little because he's honestly curious, a little because if they've got game he wants it, and maybe more than a little because he needs the breathing space. A few minutes to let his brain and his heart catch up with the situation. Mostly his heart. 

There's a brief, unreadable silence while he carefully doesn't pay attention to whatever look they're exchanging behind his back. And then something shifts. 

"Hey," Tommy says. He's looking up at Lovett, smiling shyly. "Can my friend Jon here get you a drink?"

Lovett can't help but return the smile. He turns to Favs, who is gazing at them both with an expression Lovett's never seen on his face before. "You mind getting me a beer?" 

"Sure," Favs says easily, standing in a way that shows off his ease of movement, the confidence with which he inhabits his body. "Three beers?"

Lovett attempts to project surprise, then intrigue. He's not sure how well it works, but hey, he's trying. "Sure." 

Favs brings them back some beers from Lovett's fridge, sits down close enough that his leg presses against Lovett, there but not demanding. If this were a bar, a house party, a crowded room somewhere not here, not now, it would be the perfect level of _hey, I'm interested, are you interested?_ As it is, it's all that and more, familiar and reassuring and exciting and new all bundled up together where he least expected it. 

Jon Favreau's leg is pressed up against Lovett's not because he doesn't mind Lovett's gay, not because he he trusts Lovett not to read into it, but because he likes that Lovett's gay, because he _wants_ Lovett to read into it. Because he and Tommy _want_ Lovett.

"We didn't catch your name," Tommy says, slight emphasis on 'we'. God, he's good at this. Works well with a script, their Tommy. 

"Lovett," Lovett says, charmed in spite of himself. "Jon Lovett. You boys can call me Lovett."

Tommy clinks his beer to Lovett's. "Okay, Lovett. Nice to meet you." Then Favs clinks his beer to Lovett's too, a reminder that hey, there are three of them here. 

"I've got to say," Lovett says, breaking character, "this is devastatingly effective." 

Tommy grins at him -- a real Tommy grin, not the seductive half-smile he's been giving Lovett up to now -- and takes a swig of his beer. "It's better this way around. If Jon takes the lead, I end up just lurking awkwardly to the side like the pickle no one ordered." 

"That's not --" Favs starts to say, then stops. "Yeah, okay, that's true." 

The two of them laugh, both sitting close enough to him he can feel the shake of their chests. Like everything else they've done this evening, he's realizing now, it's an inviting laugh, a laugh that wants him to join in. 

"So how did it happen the first time?" Lovett asks, reaching for something that will let him stretch out this grace period without having to go back to pretending he doesn't know them. He wants all three of them to be here, together, as he cautiously makes his way along this path they've opened up. 

Tommy and Favs share a smile. 

"You wanna--?"

"No, you go." 

So Tommy takes the lead: "We were in this bar in Chicago, and this woman comes up to us. She's exactly Jon's type, you know, hot and confident and funny--"

"My type, right," Favs interrupts. "No, go on."

"She gets talking to both of us, we're having a good time, and I try to back off, you know, give this loser a shot." Somewhere in this, Tommy has slung an arm over the back of the couch. The two of them, Tommy and Favs, are leaning in, bracketing Lovett with their full interest, their full attention. It's familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He could get used to this. 

"But she puts a hand on his arm, like no, stay," Favs takes over. "So I try to back off, and she puts a hand on my arm, and she says --" Favs and Tommy exchange another grin. "-- 'What is it about men that none of you think I know what I want?'"

"She's laughing at us," Tommy continues, "but in a hot way."

"Again, totally just my type, not Tommy's type at all," Favs interjects. 

They're both turned on by the memory, and maybe also by the anticipation. Lovett bites his lip, watches them both watch him. It's pretty fucking hot. 

"So there I am, equally terrified and turned on," Tommy says. "And this asshole here just grins at me like he's daring me to do a keg stand or streak around the block."

"The way I remember it," Favs says with a laugh in his voice, "he's standing there cool as anything, just looking me up and down like he doesn't think I'm good for it." Favs ducks his head, then looks up, eyes darting hungrily between Tommy and Lovett. "I think 90% of the rest of that night was just trying to prove myself to him."

Tommy swallows. He reaches out, signalling the movement, to put one hand on Lovett's thigh. It's heavy and possessive and grounding in the very best way, a promise that they really are all three of them in this together, not the epic love story of Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau plus occasional comic relief. 

Tommy strokes his thumb up and down the soft material of Lovett's sweatpants. Drawing on reserves he didn't know he had, Lovett just about manages not to whimper. Tommy Vietor's hand is on his thigh. With intent. 

"She took us back to her hotel room and sat on my lap so I could kiss her neck while Jon made out with her," he tells his hand where it rests on Lovett. 

Favs makes to mirror Tommy's hand and then stops for some reason, like he's not ten thousand percent sure of his welcome. That's truly ridiculous, so Lovett grabs his hand and puts it on his other thigh, yep, just there, both of his best friends with their hands a scant few inches and one very thin layer of worn cotton away from his dick, that's something he definitely thought through before committing to, good job, not distracting at all. 

Favs smiles down at his own hand on Lovett's thigh, then tells it, "Tommy kept doing things to her neck that got her to make these sounds into my mouth. It was kind of like he was kissing me through her, like everything his mouth did got amplified against mine." 

Both of their voices have got rougher. Tommy is all blotchy and Favs' eyes are so fucking dark. And they both, they have their hands on him, they're leaning in against him, they really honestly do want him here, they want him to be breathing shallowly right along with them. They want him. He squirms just slightly, and as he does so his thighs come close enough together that their pinkies brush. Their breath hitches in stereo. 

"She stayed on my lap while Jon ate her out," Tommy says. "She had her legs over his shoulders, so he had to brace himself against my thighs."

"I kept getting distracted by Tommy's breathing," Favs continues. "I was going down on this woman whose name I couldn't even remember, but it was Tommy I could hear, and Tommy I had in my hands, and. Yeah. It was a lot."

Tommy's biting his lip now. Favs' other hand is clenched against his side. They're all three of them hard -- Lovett is the most visible, not having dressed for a surprise seduction, but neither of the others are hiding it either. If he makes them, they'll tell him the whole story -- who fucked whom and how, each lingering touch that they then boxed away for ten years -- but he finds he doesn't much care. He got his breathing space. He believes them. It's good. This is good. It's about to be really fucking good. 

So full of tenderness he feels like he might burst, he puts his hand on Tommy's, holding him in place, and turns to kiss Favs. 

He meets Favs with a gentleness at odds with the frantic beating of his heart. It's a slow, sweet kiss, the kind he likes most, a kiss that can stand on its own. A kiss that holds too much to be rushed, a kiss that promises. He feels electric where they touch. 

"Holy fuck," Tommy breathes. 

Lovett drops a short, sweet kiss on Favs' lips, and another, and another, before turning to Tommy. 

And Tommy? Tommy kisses so fucking earnestly, it's like he's trying to convince Lovett from scratch, like this is his one chance to explain. Like he's imagined this before, and now that he can put it into action he's not going to waste a moment. It's sinfully hot.

"Wow," Lovett says after. "I mean, wow. Did you know he could do that?" he asks Favs, before turning to Tommy to say, "And this guy, I mean, fuck." 

They both duck their heads, synchronized bashfulness. 

"I don't know why I'm telling you guys, though, if anyone knows it's-- Wait." There's something about the tenor of their silence. "Are you saying you _haven't_? What the fuck, you haven't even kissed yet?"

Favs shakes his head minutely. His free hand is rubbing the back of his neck. "We wanted to wait to see if you-- It didn't seem right? To start without you?"

Just when he thought he couldn't love these ridiculous nerds any more. He can't find the words to respond, just gestures with both hands, bringing his palms together because come on, the fact that they haven't kissed yet is basically a crime. 

"Wait. Wait. Tell me you at least kissed before, right? In your hot steamy campaign trail threesomes of plausible deniability?" 

Which, okay, probably not the best move if he wants them to be kissing, but he has to know. Is this their first kiss of this new thing, or their first kiss _ever_?

They speak over each other. Tommy's, "No," overlapping with Favs', "I wanted to."

Tommy looks at Favs sharply. "You never said."

Favs just looks at him flatly.

"Fair," Tommy says. "You wanna maybe fix that?"

And right in front of Lovett's eyes, like clean cut Bostonian porn sent from the heavens, Tommy and Favs kiss. 

It's. Fuck. It's good. It's really, really good. It's ten years of repressed longing, of finishing each other's sentences, of following each other across the country. They're gorgeous together, fitting so well and responding so beautifully to each other, that watching them feels like its own kind of seduction. Only the steady pressure of their hands on his thighs stops his soul flying out of his body with _want_. 

After, they sit back on either side of Lovett, both pressed tightly against him. 

"Good?" Lovett asks. 

Favs seesaws his free hand. "Could use some practice." 

Tommy laughs. "Nothing to write home about."

The thick air of lust all three of them are surrounded by begs to differ, but Lovett allows them their bit. 

Of course, that's when Pundit decides that enough is enough, she doesn't care what pointless human nonsense is going on, she absolutely has to go out now. Lovett loves her more than he loves pretty much anyone else, but she has the worst timing. 

They break to deal with the dogs. Tommy puts the food in the fridge. And then, because he can, because he has to, Lovett hustles them into the bedroom. 

"Now, I know this is going to be unfamiliar territory for you, but rest assured, I am a --" _\-- gentle and proficient tour guide,_ he was going to say, but before he can finish the joke Tommy and Favs have pressed him up against a wall and are kissing his neck, tilting his head back so they can get his jawline, the curve of his throat. 

"Fine," he manages eventually, "you've got moves."

They do, indeed, have moves. They're lavishing attention on his neck, his shoulders, his jaw, taking occasional moments to stop and kiss each other, or drop happy kisses on Lovett's mouth and cheeks. 

"Can we?" Tommy says, slipping his hands under Lovett's ratty tee. 

"Literally anything," Lovett says, because, seriously, literally anything. 

They get his top off, and sure, they might have practised this on women, but they're adjusting to the new terrain with gusto, not even for a moment making him feel like they're expecting anything but what they find. 

"You guys," Tommy says, then plants a kiss on Favs' cheek while Favs teases one of Lovett's nipples gently with his teeth. "Seriously, you guys."

Lovett brings his hands up to stroke their faces gently. The tenderness of the moment is huge in his chest, a bubble of love that pushes out every fear, every doubt, every self-imposed check and balance. 

Favs turns his face towards Lovett's hand, rubbing his cheek against the palm. Tommy drops a kiss on Lovett's other palm then goes to his knees. 

"You ever sucked a dick, Favreau?" Tommy says, looking up at Favs with challenge in his eyes. If that's the Tommy that Favs had a threesome to impress way back in '07, well. Relatable, quite honestly. "Come here. I'll show you."

Tommy checks in with Lovett, who can in no way be blamed for any frantic nodding or desperate sounds he makes reassuring Tommy that yes, this dick, it is here to be sucked, and then takes Lovett into his mouth with a smooth, easy movement that knocks Lovett's breath away. 

Tommy's mouth is hot and wet and so fucking perfect on him, just, yes, this, please, forever, until Tommy pulls off and takes Lovett's dick in hand to slowly, gently, almost sweetly feed it into Favs' open mouth. 

"You're doing so good for us," Tommy whispers, which gets a moan from Favs that goes straight along Lovett's dick. "So damned good, I can't believe how perfect you are. Your mouth, fuck."

Tommy has one hand resting on the back of Favs' neck, one hand wrapped around Lovett's dick. He and Favs make the most beautiful picture on their knees for Lovett. 

Lovett isn't going to last long, but he wants to watch every moment of it, to memorize the concentration on Favs' face and the intensity of Tommy's movements, to see his own dick in Tommy's hand and Favs' mouth. It's. It's a lot. 

When he feels himself about to come, he taps Favs out, only for Tommy to tap himself right back in again, swallowing Lovett's orgasm down like there's no place in the world he'd rather be. 

Lovett sinks to the floor after, sits so he's level with Favs and Tommy, kisses them both softly, sweetly, letting them feel him smile against their lips. For the longest time, he never let himself want this. Even just thinking about it without his stomach twisting away in shame had seemed out of reach. And now he's here with them, and it's better than he could have imagined if he'd spent the last eight years doing nothing but. 

"You guys want me to --" He's not sure what he's going to offer. Anything. Everything. 

"Kiss me," Favs says decisively. "Kiss me while Tommy sucks me off."

Tommy laughs his happiest laugh, the one Lovett likes best in the world. After he's stopped laughing, he says, more to himself than to either of them, "Hot damn," and starts to arrange Favs and Lovett into perfect kissing and blowing positions. It is, objectively speaking, the hottest thing that has ever happened to anyone. 

Lovett has a job now, so he does it, kissing Favs with everything he's got, hot open mouthed kisses that crack open his heart with joy, kisses laden with sex and intimacy and promises, kisses that he can feel down to his toes. He loses himself in Favs, in his soft, needy noises and the way he's clutching at Lovett's shoulders, in his heavy, desperate breaths, until Favs has to stop, just rest his forehead against Lovett's, and ride out his orgasm, his whole body tensing and releasing in Tommy's hand. 

"Wow," Lovett says when Favs has peppered kisses on both their faces. "Okay. Tommy, you have a request too?"

But it turns out Tommy does not have a request. Tommy is clearly about two seconds from saying something ridiculous about how he's just happy to be there, and then Lovett is going to get a whole bunch of indignation all over his nice blissed out post-orgasmic haze, and no one needs that. 

"Right, up, up," Lovett says, moving Tommy onto the bed. If Lovett can't organize three men into a satisfying group sex experience, he's going to have to have a good hard look at his life and his choices. "Lie down."

Tommy lies down flat on his back, smiling up at Lovett all cheerfully obedient and handsome. It would be disgusting if it wasn't the best thing ever. 

Lovett gets Favs lying on one side of Tommy, lies on the other, so the two of him are on their sides facing him, each able to kiss him deeply then pass him to the other, each able to hold him and cherish him the way he's been holding and cherishing them. 

They kiss him for long minutes. Lovett spends the time enjoying the feel of him, the ease with which he lets them pass him between them. 

Lovett reaches for some lube while Favs is kissing Tommy, then takes the opportunity to grab one of Fav's hands, bring it down so the two of them are both loosely holding Tommy's dick, a light, teasing touch that makes Tommy almost snarl into Favs' mouth. 

Fuck. Lovett is absolutely going to be coming back to that noise. But now is not the time for that, so instead he and Favs bring Tommy off together, trading him back and forth for long, deep kisses until he comes, gasping into Favs’ mouth. 

The three of them lie together on Lovett's bed after, breathing heavily and grinning at each other like they can't believe they just did that, and, even better, no one can stop them doing it again. 

_The promise of joy,_ Lovett thinks to himself. He loved being gay before this evening, and he'll love being gay whatever happens next. But he won't pretend that this hasn't soothed something raw in him -- this joy, right now, that he’s sharing with the two people who mean the most to him in the world. The joy that he has because, not in spite, of who he is. 

Lovett wants to say something like, _That was amazing,_ or, _Holy shit, you guys,_ but there's too much going on inside him for the words to come out. Instead, he kisses Tommy's shoulder lightly, then leans over him to kiss Favs', and trusts them both to know exactly what he means. 

###

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos very much appreciated! 
> 
> Title is from Grace Petrie's Black Tie:
> 
> And the images that fucked ya  
Were a patriarchal structure  
And you never will surrender  
To a narrow view of gender  
And I swear there’ll come a day  
When you won’t worry what they say  
On the labels, on the doors  
You will figure out what’s yours
> 
> Alternative jokes about star signs: 
> 
> Crying over a callous Capricorn  
Problem of the Pisces pissant  
Angst over an Aries asshole  
Tirade about a terrible Taurus  
Saga of the Sagittarius sociopath
> 
> And additional content notes re internalised homophobia:
> 
> Lovett is dealing with some shit he internalised over the years about Not Being A Creepy Predatory Gay -- it's okay to be gay as long as he doesn't sneak peeks in the locker room or "take advantage" of his straight male friends in nebulous and unspecified ways that a thousand homophobic jokes in 90s sitcoms taught him were bad.


End file.
